This piece by Amber Scorah in today’s New York Times tore at my heart, arousing all sorts of emotions that I’d prefer would stay dormant. Fear of mortality, fear of loss, frustration at not being able to believe what might make me feel better, and so on. This is the gamut of emotions that Scorah ran after she left her faith and then lost her son, a boy who died without apparent cause, simply stopping breathing while at daycare.
Scorah used to be a Jehovah’s Witness, one of the most all-consuming, odious, and dictatorial of the Abrahamic faiths. She became an atheist at 18, and thereby experienced yet another pain: the destruction of all her JW beliefs, including the conviction that you’ll see your loved ones in a post-death Paradise.
Click on the screenshot to read this moving cri du coeur:
There’s another problem for nonbelievers like me: we’re simply unable to comfort the bereaved by telling them that their loved ones are in a “better place,” and that they’ll reunite some day. Believers can do that sincerely, and the believing bereaved might thereby be consoled. All I can do is express condolences, and, if I knew the deceased, give an anecdote or two about how I remember them and how I cared about them. That sounds like the useless tinkling of small bells.
Or you can say say “they’re not really dead, because they’ll live on in your memory,” but to me that rings false. Memories are not living people you can talk to, touch, and love. Lacking belief in an afterlife, atheists have no hope of ever meeting the deceased again. Yes, you can remember the good times, and be grateful that someone was in your life, but those memories are always mixed with sadness. I’ve lost two of my best friends, and, if I live, I will lose more. Often I forget that they’re gone and want to tell them something. “The Red Sox won the Series, Kenny!” And then I remember that he’s not here to hear it and get angry (he was always a Yankees fan).
Yes, it would perhaps be better to believe, though I’m told that believers die harder than do atheists, and maybe every believer harbors a doubt at the end that this is a true end. But our dilemma, or at least mine, is this: I cannot force myself to believe something that makes no sense, however consoling it would be. And that is also Scorah’s dilemma:
I was moved by these words from strangers. And I wanted to believe these messengers who told me my son lives or will live again. Perhaps these were the people we in my old religion called prophets and apostles — people who dispatched words of hope to those in distress.
But though they were sincere, none of what they said was true. There is no heaven, no door at the end of my life that I will find my boy behind, no paradise Earth. He simply had ceased to exist.
I suspect that these people rushed to save me because, deep down, somewhere unacknowledged, they too knew the truth. We all know that there is something desperately sad that we have to protect one another from. Our stomachs know it, our spines know it. Our humanity doesn’t want to let us believe that this is all there is, that a child can just disappear. And that is why these strangers cared so much about a stranger like me.
What I had not anticipated about the cost of losing my faith was that it would no longer be possible to deceive myself. I could no longer make a pact with any higher being. No hours of service could convince a God that I deserved to have this child again. Whatever I had done to deserve him once, I was not worthy of him twice.
I am not saying there is no God, but I am saying no God would do this to someone.
I don’t know anyone who gave up their faith in God and regained it, but I hear there are such people. It will not happen to me. Scorah’s last line is brutally honest and yes, she is saying that there is no God—at least no god worth worshiping.
She goes on:
If I could believe even a little again, perhaps it would happen to me, like it does to other people. Their dead come alive, appearing at bedsides on dark nights, or as voices in the wind. These voices tell the grieving ones that they forgive them, that they love them, that they are somewhere else, they exist, and all is not nothingness.
If belief were a choice, I might choose it. But it’s not. I don’t trade in certainty anymore. If there is something more, it’s not something we know. If we can’t even grasp how it is that we got here, how can we know with any certainty where, if anywhere, we go when we die?
Well, we sort of know how we got here: through the formation of planets out of the Big Bang, and then the evolution of humans on one of those planets. That much we can learn from evidence. We can’t know what happens after we die, but here the absence of evidence does constitute evidence of absence. If there is a god, as Delos McKown said, he’s arranged things so it looks very much like there is no god. “The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.”
Scorah has found a silver lining in death, as many atheists do:
But death without hope also makes one acutely grateful for life, sensitive to it. In the absence of my son, I felt the presence of love all around me, from these strangers and friends alike. And then came my son’s little sister, with a smile and fingers just like his.
I wish I could feel this way. Yes, I’m grateful for life, but also greedy for it. I don’t want to die in ten or fifteen years. The show will go on, and I want to see what happens. Many readers here have said that they wouldn’t want to live forever: they’d get bored. But Ceiling Cat, is it too much to ask for another hundred years?
Here is Scorah’s book about leaving the Jehovah’s Witnesses, click on the screenshot to see it at Amazon:
Ask not for whom the tiny bells tintinnabulate …
“But Ceiling Cat, is it too much to ask for another hundred years?”
Unfortunately, the only person or thing that can grant that wish is science. And science is not very close to extending the outer limit of the human lifespan, which is about 115 years. It is not inconceivable, although not likely, that in the next 30 to 40 years science may come to understand the ageing process and how to arrest it or reverse it. I will not around to reap the rewards of such a medical “miracle” should it happen. That may be a good thing because extending the human lifespan will create many challenges that I have little confidence that humans can successfully meet. This would include overpopulation, the increased use of scarce resources and the economics of a vastly greater number of people trying to find employment and live a decent life.
As atheists, we do not share the delusion of an afterlife. In pursuit of this particular truth, we do not have the benefit of the psychological solace of looking forward to something better after death. Religions that preach the existence of heaven provide comfort to its adherents. Such folks do not care about “truth.” They want relief from pain. I do not condemn them for this. I simply cannot believe in something that is patently absurd. But, there is a price to pay for this.
I don’t expect that prolonging life much will happen, any complex trait has thousands of genes and environmental factors behind it (c.f. body length). On the other hand it is still an open question how old a human can become.
But if we extend human lifespan I also do not expect it to lead to overpopulation. We have an innate sex drift, not an innate children drift. (Though we are evolutionary selected for accepting them once the sex drift has promoted them.) AFAIK peak population will come 2050ish, thereafter decreasing and aging populations will become the new situation – a problem, or an opportunity.
Prolonging a life in health and productivity will be seen as doubly desirable – an opportunity – after that.
“the absence of evidence does constitute evidence of absence”
I have trouble with this common line. It seems to me, combined with what we know about the natural world, that surviving the grave is so unlikely, we might as well say it’s not an issue. We can’t say it with absolute certainty, of course, but it just doesn’t justify a second thought in my view.
As far as Scorah’s lamentations, I don’t think I ever thought about an afterlife when friends or family died. As an atheist since I was 12 or so, I’ve always thought of it as just wishful thinking. I do wonder what all the fuss is about. The emotion of grief is fully justified and can be deep and severe and very long lasting, but the search for an alternate reality where death doesn’t happen just never occurs to me. Am I the only one?
I think I misread that evidence of absence thing. Ignore my comment.
I’ve never really believed in an afterlife, either. Nor was I ever taught that there was one. The torments of facing the truth that I’ll never see loved ones again or survive forever myself also seem to be muted, if not absent. As you say, I don’t feel that particular loss. Immortality was never a live option.
It would be interesting to compare the feelings of lifelong atheists to atheists who lost their faith — particularly a strong faith. I suspect there’d be a statistical difference between the groups when it comes to dealing with grief.
(raises hand) Over here…
I’m a Third Generation atheist/freethinker/nonbeliever.
I’m surrounded by death these days. My partner is in our local nursing home and I see him getting worse over time. And all around us I see dying people – my partner’s roommate died last week. From time to time the nurses and aides will come around and close all the doors to the rooms. And they’ll come around and open the doors again once the undertaker has left.
It’s just there. Death happens. If someone I love dies I reserve the right to cry and grieve. If my partner dies before I do (he’s 68, and I’m 77 – I have advancing age working against me; he has diabetes and major health issues – we’re racing to the grave and we’ll see who gets there first) I’ll drink absinthe and play old weepy George Jones country tunes and bawl my fool head off! Just leave me the hell alone and let me play my lugubrious music and and cry myself silly and drink absinthe (but I’ll pace myself with that last one – I don’t want to drink so much I make myself sick). That’s all right! I’m allowed to grieve.
I never had that faith to lose. I never believed in a Heaven where we’ll all meet again. What’s scary is Hell. Being a believer could be pretty worrisome, I’d think. Am I really saved? Did I believe in the right way? Did I have faith in the right things? Catholics think Protestants have it wrong. Protestants think Catholics are missing the boat. Various sects think other sects don’t have the Truth. And of course Christians think atheists are doomed for sure. How do I know I have the genuine correct belief? I’d think the threat of Hell would make people pretty crazy.
I don’t see belief as a source of comfort at all! There’s always that awful Threat behind the “good news”.
I wonder if most people find it hard to imagine being really dead and there being nothing. Nothing. N-O-T-H-I-N-G. Oooohhhh! Horrors! What kind of Nothing? There I am, and I can’t see anything, can’t hear anything, can’t feel anything, I have no body! I’m dead, but somehow I still know I’m dead, somehow there’s an awareness of Nothingness.
I suspect that when I die I won’t know I’m dead because there won’t be any more Me to know anything. My consciousness will stop and my body will dissolve into elements in one way or another.
(Hey, Laura, the Big Bang called. It wants its Star Stuff back…)
There’s no temptation to revert to God belief because I never had that in the first place.
I’m Star Stuff, we’re all Star Stuff, and Star Stuff is constantly changing form, constantly shifting from one shape to another.
But I’m damn well going to cry and grieve when someone, whether human or feline or reptile (one cat and two snakes right now). goes and dies on me.
And if anything were to happen to my daughter I’d grieve – well, it would be thermonuclear grief, and I’d likely never be really over it. We were not meant to outlive our children.
And all of this takes place for me without any sort of deity.
Sastra says, “The torments of facing the truth that I’ll never see loved ones again or survive forever myself also seem to be muted, if not absent. As you say, I don’t feel that particular loss. Immortality was never a live option.”
Yes. I’ve never expected to see anyone again. I agree with you on this.
Professor Ceiling Cat writes, “I wish I could feel this way. Yes, I’m grateful for life, but also greedy for it. I don’t want to die in ten or fifteen years. The show will go on, and I want to see what happens.”
Now there’s something. I do think, “Awww, I won’t be around to see what happens next! Phooey! I’m curious, I’m interested, and I’m gonna miss out on lots of stuff!”
But when I go to the nursing home, to the House o’ Death, well, uh, I see just what a long life can bring. We have an old lady who will turn 100 this month. I used to want to live to 125, but I suspect that people who live to 100 and 100+ are more often in really bad, bad shape, and that it’s more rare for people of that age to be spry and healthy and have their minds intact.
There’s a pair could beat a full house — a short story just waitin’ to get written.
Hey, thanks for that, Ken…I’ll stick that in the back of my mind, and maybe some day I’ll come up with the words to create a short story.
There’s *plenty* behind the the music and the classy booze and the grief. Could I take all this memory and grief and, well, just so much, just so much (the eventually to be dead protagonist is a dead ringer for Kristofferson’s “The Pilgrim”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV8KmNoLd2g ), could this all be condensed into a good short story?
Meanwhile I go to the nursing home and tell him I love him while I watch his brains melt away and spill out his ears and his body deteriorate with diabetic complications.
No matter how ugly it gets, every day is Valentine’s Day.
I, Mr Laurance, am sorry in re your Partner,
too.
Of one’s being the Dust o’th’ Star Stuff –
t r u t h from you and from others in re
grieving I have found to be quite helpful.
Another help I learnt years ago: Being dead
‘ll be as if I never was. As if .before.
I was ever born.
Yeah. T r u e, too. No one. especially me,
… … knew of me in, say, y1940, or y1939,
or y1946, so my knowing .that. ? Now, whilst
alive and yet breathing ?
Then .that. is … … not so bad. Once
and for all, I am dead. And gone.
Blue
Yes, Blue, I face death as you do. It will be like before I was born.
It was Darkness and Nothing. Then the light came on and there was this particular life. And then some day there will be Nothing again. There will be no ‘I’ to know that there is Nothing.
Seeing things this way has me appreciating and loving the time I have and reveling in the wonder that I exist at all! How unlikely it is that I won this lottery! But I did, and made an appearance in 1941. How amazing!
Star stuff is constantly changing form.
“I will not say, do not weep, because not all tears are evil.” (Gandalf.)
Also,
“I am not one of those philosophers who think a man should not cry.” (Descartes)
(I take D.’s point is the universal nature here, not anything about men or women etc. in particular.)
sub
It was a personal and devastating loss that caused me to reevaluate the entire structure of my belief system. I think the sentiment that hurt the most was the person who said they were praying for a miracle to reverse the death. Even then, as a believer, I knew it wouldn’t happen that way and it almost broke me.
This was the most meaningful sort of sentiment I received.
Of course the death of your child is the worst kind of death to experience but I’m not sure how religion makes it better with fantasy. Every living thing will die, it is just the when we do not know about. Living forever or even another 100 years is not going to happen and you really do not want this unless there is someway to guarantee your health through all those years. Just to remain healthy to the end of your life is a lot to ask for or get.
I was reading a WWII book, The Wild Blue, which is about the bomber crews in the Army Air force. Twice as many air officers died in battle than in all the rest of the Army despite the larger size of ground forces. Also, during the course of the war, 35,946 airmen died in accidents. That was 43% of all accidents in the war time army. Surviving 25 missions was not one of your better averages.
Useless, as you say, it may seem, but to comfort the afflicted is a mitzvah just the same.
What comes through clearly is the price the author pays for refusing to pretend that she believes. The people who should be troubled by her account are believers in belief who abet her social isolation.
“I don’t know anyone who gave up their faith in God and regained it, but I hear there are such people.”
My impression: atheism that evolves early and by gradual degrees is more robust. Whereas, a sudden repudiation – not informed by skepticism but by (say) anger at god – is more likely to be reversed.
What happened to that frequent WEIT commenter (Canadian fellow?, former clergy?) who’s wife sought assisted suicide? (I think he tutored the good professor on theology for Faith Vs. Fact). Seems like he might have slid back towards belief.
You’re thinking of Eric MacDonald, intellect extraordinary. And yes, as I understand, he did eventually re-embrace his Anglican roots. And I will not hold that against him in recognition of his clear-headed contributions. If you will indulge…
Yet in what sense is theology an “intellectual discipline”? The phrasing is significant, for Polkinghorne is past master at the art of misdirection. Astrology, for instance, or alchemy, could justly be called intellectual disciplines. Anything with an esoteric vocabulary, and transformation rules for using that vocabulary in well-formed expressions, is an intellectual discipline; and until someone asks whether the words actually refer to anything that can confirm the truth, or establish the falsity, of those expressions, it can seem as though participants in the language game are actually talking about important matters, when, in fact, the whole activity might be entirely self-contained, a very complex, intellectual jeu d’esprit in which many enjoyable hours may be spent. Religion is, in my view, such a language, and the question whether it can have any relationship to an intellectual discipline which actually confirms or disconfirms propositions on the basis of things external to the manipulation of expressions within the discipline is the point at issue.
I’m sad to think that such an intelligent, feeling, person is helplessly drawn in by the tractor beam of religion after having earned his freedom to a significant extent.
I miss Eric. He was a great help to me through personal correspondence when my wife was dying.
I lost to death my Person last month.
Disease, suddenly acute although likely
for years’ time ( known via scientific research upon other dead ones ) quiescently
undermining him. Utterly unexpected by those
of Us of today’s Currency. Age 60 only.
I utterly loathe.loathe. the “He is in a
better place, Blue ” “condolence” and
wanna merely scream out to Any who muck
that rubbish upon me, “ ‘ll then if it is
such ‘a better place’ as you ‘ve just stated
to me that it is, then why aren’t you killing
Your Selves in order to up and to ‘ go there ’
to it Your Selves ! ”
A friend of many decades and whose sister was
killed at age 17 more decades ago than our
friendship and whose own father ( for and
to whom she lovingly administered long – / long – term elder care including for his farm ! )
plagued upon her, LO, those same very many
decades with this muck, “ The Wrong Daughter
died in that car crash, ” told me last month
the kindest condolence in re my dead Person,
“ Any’s Life no matter Its Length, Blue,
is … … a Complete One. ”
I want to remember that statement.
For always.
Blue
Thanks for passing on your friend’s comforting words, Blue.
I’m sorry to hear of the death of your Person, Blue. Loss hurts. I hope you’ll find resources to comfort you.
And thank you for sharing with us:
“ Any’s Life no matter Its Length, Blue,
is … … a Complete One. ”
I wish you comfort in your private sorrows, Blue.
From star dust to star dust….
When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats
“When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.”
Lovely.
Indeed, Ms Smokedpaprika and Mr rickflick:
… … l o v e l y.
Blue
“I am not saying there is no God, but I am saying no God would do this to someone.”
You gloss this: “she is saying that there is no God—at least no god worth worshiping.” Seems to me she’s deliberately introducing another option—namely, it’s not God who did this to me.
It’s interesting that while she absolutely rejects an afterlife (as I do as well), she never explicitly rejects the possibility of there being a God. Her conclusion makes this clear: “I will never know who my child would have been, but I know his love. If there is a God, this is what he gave me.”
Spinoza (and likely, really, Descartes). And, possibly, my mother.
“Spinoza (and likely, really, Descartes). And, possibly, my mother.”
Can’t say where your mother fits in, but I’d put the Force before Descartes.
At the age of 80, I found this post rang true. It moved me greatly. As the painting’s title asks — Who are we. Where do we come from? Where do we go?”
“I don’t know why he saved my life. Maybe in those last moments he loved life more than he ever had before. Not just his life, anybody’s life, my life. All he’d wanted were the same answers the rest of us want. Where did I come from? Where am I going? How long have I got? All I could do was sit there and watch him die.” –Deckard, *Blade Runner*
I have never seen _Blade Runner_, but I have seen it debated and reviewed for a long time. Since seeing SFDebris’ review, I have concluded: one way to interpret the lessons of the movie is that we are *all* replicants, of a sort, and that our dignity, and our glory, is realizing that.
This is exactly the lesson, in a way, of _R.U.R._, where the “first robots” are bioengineered human-alikes, not electromechanical things.
My young wife turned to God when she was dying, it gave her some solace. I really had no heart to go against that. I still haven’t coped with her untimely death, but religion would be the last place to go.
Darwin rejected the vain solace of after-life when his favourite daughter Annie died age ten. I can’t find it right now, but he wrote a beautiful rebuttal when one of his friends (Kingsley?) suggested that.
My wife is a firm believer, she gives Jesus his orders for the day personally every morning. She also comes from a large family. So when she dies she will inevitably get the full religious works, I have no wish to turn her funeral into a family squabble. So long as no-one demands that I say I believe it all.
If I die first I know I’ll get the full religious works too. It will console my wife and I won’t care since I won’t be there.
cr
After my mom died in 1992, I came across this poem written by Mary Elizabeth Frye. It sums up what I think death means to me as an atheist.
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glint on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
of quiet birds in circled flight.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.
O my, Ms Marilyn ! I weep ! .THAT. poem
utterly .is. my Person. Thank You for it.
My Person, whose mortal corpse he ‘ad donated
for scientific research anyhow, raved when he
breathed upon certain poems so this of
Mr Auden’s I spoke to him moments before
his dying: The More Loving One … …
“Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell. But on earth indifference is the least We have to dread from man or beast.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return ?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total darkness sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.”
Blue
“The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.”
I like that little ‘dig’ very much.
But, as science-oriented people, we have to take the verb “look” here with much generality beyond the usual meaning: in the hard sciences of physics, chemistry and much biology, it even goes far beyond merely adding ‘visual aids’ such as the Hubble telescope, due more-or-less to Galileo.
Dark matter’s existence depends on solid theory like general relativity, plus (so far) no elecromagnetic (e.g. light) effects, only gravitational. But I’m convinced it is some kind of particle to the extent I understand what I read.
David Deutsch tells us we ‘look at’ other bits of the Everett multiverse when we see the Mach-Zehnder experiment, and will also do so, in spades, when quantum computers become blase. I believe him too.
Despite all these, gods hide.
But non-computable real numbers do not, IMHO.
Typo alert:
“Or you can say say “they’re not really dead,”
Well, to maybe frame it a little differently, remember that one also avoids a lot of fear and even terror by not believing in an afterlife. At a gut level, I believe in an afterlife (I say a gut level because intellectually I would tell you that I suspect but don’t know there’s some continuation of consciousness, and of course I can’t claim to know what happens when we die – but it would be like if someone asked you to step off a cliff on to an optical illusion, seven feet below where you couldn’t touch it, that was actually a springy bridge where you would land harmlessly. What you would know intellectually and what you would feel viscerally would be very different for most people. Intellectually I am agnostic about an afterlife, viscerally, it is very real to me.) This is actually not always a pleasant thing, as it’s very frightening to think where I or anyone I love could end up after death. While the pain of losing a loved one would be terrible, there may at least be some relief in very much feeling they were ‘safe’ from any further suffering or harm, rather than being whisked away to another realm where you had no idea what was happening to them. It’s a tiny, tiny, consolation I guess, but the best I can think of by way of trying to say something comforting.
“…one also avoids a lot of fear and even terror by not believing in an afterlife”
That is a byproduct, not a reason, for atheist knowledge.
“I can’t claim to know what happens when we die”
Ask an honest and forthright biologist. She knows and will explain it to you. Many others know as well, but perhaps some authority will help for it to be convincing.
I read this post multiple times over, and froze. I have no words that would be helpful. I too, was raised a JW. I also, eventually became an atheist, but not the same way. It is beyond heartbreaking, knowing what I do know, to imagine being in her shoes. I am so thankful to know about her, and how she became able to leave that very controlling organization. I have never personally known anyone who did.
Atheism is freeing and makes life simpler and more real.
“All I can do is express condolences, and, if I knew the deceased, give an anecdote or two about how I remember them and how I cared about them. That sounds like the useless tinkling of small bells.”
I know the feeling. I get half way through telling such an anecdote when it strikes me that it probably isn’t helping and sounds really lame. But I’ve got nothing better.
That’s the one time I would find religion useful. It would be so much easier to dump the whole problem on Jesus, or suggest the dead one has gone to Heaven. Especially when someone died suddenly, too early or had a miserable life and “Well, at least they had a long and happy life” would be blatantly and painfully untrue.
If there was a religion that would mind its own business and stick with comforting the needy and never, ever mess with anyone else’s life, I might adopt it. I could probably persuade myself to believe it if the result was worthwhile. It’s remarkable what the human mind is capable of. But there isn’t.
cr
We probably all experienced in our youth that moment where we realized we were mortal, that we would die someday. It’s terrifying, that first time, for many of us. When I believed I had an easy answer. But now, free of that delusion, it was painful when my youngest, a teenager came out of his room in tears, terrified, realizing he would someday die.
I had no supernatural comfort or promises. Just the truth, gentle as I could be, and the admonition to live every minute. But mostly I just held him while he cried, and I don’t know if I was more upset at not having a nicer answer or at believing someone else’s lies about it for so long myself…
I’m through two funerals this year already. Close friends of mine died early. I don’t find it worse to know they’re gone for good, because this is plainly case. Even believers know that the deceased are gone for all intents and purposes.
When you fully understand that, it’s as comforting or sad as it is anyway. The stories we tell can always make it worse, or better. Stories can be about the potential, and counterfactuals, what-if scenarios which tend to make things worse. Unless someone had a miserable time, then stories emphasise how they need not suffer anymore. Stories are really powerful, and dangerous. I understand we need to manage them, and for that, perhaps religion is useful.
But religious stories are also, if not just polite etiquette, an easy, fictional happy-end version for the infantile. It takes not much effort to find comfort in knowing that everything “reverts” to nothing, where nothing negative exists, either. No struggle, no sadness, no sorrow, no pain. It’s a truly peaceful, state of affairs.
As for the other stories, of the “soo sad they never will grow to do the Thing, or they’ll never again smell the flowers in early Summer”. We have to understand ourselves better, namely, our cognition, how it idealises perfect scenarios and plays them up, or how we are upset by something we cannot change anyway. Death is always about learning to accept what we can’t change, not worry about it too much, understand that parts of our sadness is “not real” because we imagine ourselves missing out on something when the deceased couldn’t care less (and maybe doesn’t care about smelling flowers), and eventually that our sad feelings are just us. The dead person does not feel sad. We shouldn’t conflate their state of non-existence with our feelings.
EDITH: And you don’t want to talk about it? Why? Did you do something wrong? Are you afraid of something? Whatever it is, let me help.
KIRK: Let me help. A hundred years or so from now, I believe, a famous novelist will write a classic using that theme. He’ll recommend those three words even over I love you.
—
And from the second again: “Give up your hate. You’re welcome to live with us.”
—
And more …