2002-10-02
At night. On a rooftop. Drunk with wine. Jake tried to convince me that there was something more.

Something more than this. Call it heaven. Call it life after death. Call it ghosts.

It all has the same implication: that this isn't our only ride. Somehow, the merry go round keeps spinning.

I didn't really need convincing ... because it's not as if I don't believe.

Because I want to. But .. faith ... well, you know, it's a hard pill to swallow. Faith is belief without any logical proof. No material evidence.

And that's nothing to shake a stick at. (What the hell does that saying mean anyway??)

I don't know if you have ever read Shakespeare ... I mean REALLY read Shakespeare .. but I have. Hamlet is one of my favorite Shakespearian plays. When I was twelve, I would repeat the "to or not to be" soliloqy over and over until I had it memorized. And I still know it today.

So, in case you haven't read Hamlet, there is a point in the play where he contemplates suicide. His uncle has killed his father and married his mother. His heart is breaking. His life seems out of control.

He couldn't see light in all this darkness. And the pain was becoming unbearable.

As a teenager, I could relate.

I especially read this part of the play again and again after my parents died. It gave me comfort because I didn't feel so alone. Someone else was feeling my pain ...even if he was only a figment of someone's imagination.

You should really read those words. I mean really read them. They will take your breath away.

Here is a man. A son. A grieving son. Asking himself: "Should I exist or should I not exist?"

Is today the day I should die?

Maybe, he thinks, if I die ... I will sleep. And it will end this heartache.All these "thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to". (I love that line.)

But, he realizes, it's not that easy. We don't know what happens after we die.

"For in that sleep death what dreams will come when we shuffle off this mortal coil?"

This is where it gets a little sticky.

I mean, why else would people suffer all the oppression, infidelity, shame, insolence, pain ... when it is just so easy to off yourself?

What makes us stay here?

But Hamlet knows the answer. The only thing we are sure about is our life here. After here ... well, in Shakespeare's word - it's the "undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns". It's a one way ticket, my friends. Once we hop on that freight train, we ain't never comin' back.

So, mostly, we choose to stay. If only because we are afraid of the alternative.

That's why I have a hard time believing in the afterlife. Because what if I'm wrong?

I guess it's a win/win situation. If don't believe and it's there. Then SURPRISE! And won't my face be red. And, if I do believe, and it's not there. Well, I won't know anyway.

But, you want to know what the kicker is?

My parents have never contacted me. Never came to me in a dream, or as a spirit, or gave me any sign that they're around me. Even in the days when I was so alone that I thought my loneliness would crush me and I yelled out at the top of lungs in the middle of my living room: PLEASE HELP ME! I CAN'T DO THIS ALONE!

Never heard a peep. Not one.

No flickering candle or ghostly footsteps.

Nada.

So, if there is life after death, then that would mean my parents have chosen not to help me.

And that they let me go through all this by myself.

I think that realization is far more painful than any other.

But, then again, maybe the signs have been here all along ... I just wasn't looking in the right places.

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