by Carol A Westbrook

The big blue behemoth of a garbage truck came barreling toward me. I knew I was going to die. I was in the middle of an intersection about to make a left turn. One moment the intersection had been clear, with the truck about a half mile distant.
In the next moment, the truck had sped up and was almost on top of me. I couldn’t turn in any direction without driving into traffic. I had about three seconds left to live…
This day, possibly the last day of my life, started out as a normal spring day in April. My husband, Rick, and I had errands to run in Michigan City. We were driving our cars in tandem to the tire store, so we could drop his car off for new tires and drive home together. He was in front of me and made the left turn; I followed. As I explained above, I was caught in the intersection with no place to turn.
I was about to be hit by a truck, and there was a good chance it would kill me.
I didn’t panic. I was not afraid to die. I just relaxed and waited for the end.

Time moved slowly. I was never unconscious, but I have amnesia for a good part of the event. The car was struck on the left side, which triggered the left side airbags. The impact pushed the car into the next lane, where it was struck on the right front fender. I don’t remember hearing or feeling the first impact, but I do remember the second. By this time, Rick had reached my car, and looked in to see if I was okay. He was the first person there. I told him I was fine except for chest pain (due to hitting the steering wheel). The paramedics arrived shortly thereafter, and soon I was settled in an ambulance with oxygen. I was taken to a nearby hospital where I spent 2 days, until I no longer needed oxygen. Afterwards, recovery was fast, and (eventually) the insurance company totaled the car and sent me a check to cover the purchase of an equivalent, replacement car.
It takes a close call like this to realize how poorly prepared one is for death, and to give some thought to what death might be like.

The following represents my thoughts on this topic as they evolved over my lifetime. These ideas may seem naive and unsophisticated, but everyone has their own thoughts and feelings about death, and these are mine.
When I was a child I never gave it a thought. Lots of cowboys and Indians (on TV) fell off their horses, dead. And I had a few elderly relatives who died. It didn’t mean anything. The relatives’ funerals were fun when you are 4 years old and your cousins are running around with you. But it wasn’t until I started school – Catholic school –

that I began to have an idea of death. Of course these ideas came from the nuns and priests and the religion I was raised in.
At first death was a place. It was heaven, or hell, or purgatory. You died, but went to this place, without your body but otherwise wide awake and aware of your surroundings. Then you just sat around, and God talked to you and reviewed your life and you were assigned a spot. Then you waited, waited, waited, either in heaven or in hell. For all eternity. I realized that the big draw of Christianity was that it promised resurrection after death: you were awakened, you got your body back. You could stop waiting and you could again participate in life. Forever (unless you were bad, then you went to hell). A pretty good deal, better than other religions offered.
I bought the whole thing, hook line and sinker, until my senior year in Catholic girls’ high school. Everybody had to take a class in religion, but the “smart” girls, of which I was one, had a class in Theology. We studied Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, which contained his five proofs for the existence of God. I felt that these proofs were so naïve that they led me to conclude that there is NO proof for the existence of God. None of the arguments holds up. You could just as well argue against the existence of God. Because of this I had serious doubts about my faith, but refused to admit it to myself until I was about half-way through college.

I have never been an agnostic. An agnostic believes that they can’t be sure whether God exists or not, so they will keep an open mind. The agnostic’s prayer: “Oh God, if there is a God, save my soul, if I have a soul.” Being an agnostic is just a cowardly way to believe in a God. I resent such a non-committal attitude. Either you believe or you don’t.
It took a lot of commitment to be an atheist. Initially there is this feeling of guilt when you break a church rule: missing mass on Sunday, or anything to do with sex. Eventually I got used to it and I began to consider the big question: what is death? What will happen to me when I die? If there is no God, can there be death?

I read a bit of Stephen Hawking, to the extent that I could follow it. Yes, I agreed that we lived in the Time-Space continuum. Time didn’t really flow, it existed. And therefore so did I. For all of time. So I was immortal? But the big trick that was played on us was that we weren’t aware of this, so what’s the use? I am still pondering this one. How can we enjoy being immortal if we don’t know that we are?
But the big breakthrough happened when I had a medical procedure. A colonoscopy, to be exact. They anesthesized me–that is, they put me to sleep–for the procedure. I was really out for 45 minutes. I woke up and didn’t know when or where I was. I realized that for the space of—what, 45 minutes?—I didn’t exist. I lost those minutes forever. This is when I realized that when you ask someone to describe what they think death will be like, they automatically put themselves in the picture—as observers, participants, singing…whatever it is, they will be themselves in it, and aware of what they are doing. But the likelihood is that they will not be aware of any of it—eternity is just another colonoscopy
I believe that self-awareness happens in the brain via chemicals and nerves and receptors. It is truly a natural phenomena, that will eventually be described by science. Just science. There is no spirit, no spirituality, nothing science can’t (eventually) understand as neurologic signals. And when the power is turned off, so are you. Nothing spiritual here; just the laws of physics.

But that’s the nice thing about death. It’s “lights out.” Though you may exist in the Time-Space continuum, you don’t live in it or participate in it anymore Whatever is on your mind is gone. No pain, no guilt. You no longer owe anyone anything. If you have a horrible sin on your conscience, it is gone. If you were the most brilliant person in the world, a Nobel prize winner, it doesn’t matter. It is gone too. Your sins wiped away! You win! But the irony is that you don’t get to enjoy it, because there is no “you.”
And that’s what death is to me.
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