Now it’s becoming clear to me that my friends and acquaintances can be divided into two distinct groups. There are those who are on familiar terms with death. They talk about my condition with matter-of-fact sympathy but without much ceremony. And there are those who shy away from me because the looming Grim Reaper makes them uncomfortable. He’s like some visiting dignitary from an alien realm. They are republican citizens, unsure how they should defer to a powerful dignitary who might carry them off into his shadowy entourage with its myriads. They know where they stand in the Republic of the Living, but where will they stand in the Realm of the Dead? Yes, we are middle class and status-driven even when it comes to our annihilation.
I doubt that the wretched of the earth think about death the way we do. The truly down and out, the oppressed and the depressed see death as banal, an equal or lesser of evils. They have friends and loved ones who belong to the brotherhood and sisterhood of the initiated. Death doesn’t affect their status and standing in the Republic of the Living; they have no standing, no place in this world. Those who belong nowhere belong to one another in the ultimate classless society. Like clandestine dissenters under some ruthless dictatorship, the initiates refuse to show deference to the governing potentate. They are freer than those who shun the dying and make their fear the center of their unreflective lives. They know that death is Nothing.
Signed
Andrew (Weeks)
Normal Thoughts 