“Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name.”
— Ernest Hemingway, or Irvin Yalom, or Banksy (depending on who you ask)
Interesting idea, isn’t it? That you experience death twice even though you’re not around for the second one. That first death, in particular is something I’ve been thinking about quite a bit recently. When whatever it is that makes us alive, be it the soul or the little electric zaps in the brain or the simulation of perception, ceases to work anymore and fades away. I envy anyone that has a firm belief in an afterlife — that a new existence is waiting just beyond the veil that you’re not exactly looking forward to, but can at least find comfort in the idea that you, in some way, will continue on.
Death fuels our idea of legacy, what we leave behind when we’re gone. But when you’re buried in the ground, it won’t really matter to you when or if someone else says your name or remembers you. You’re not here anymore. You’re dead. Legacy is like grief in that sense: it’s more for other people than it is for you.
To be honest, the idea of a heaven or a hell existing is laughable to me. Nobody really knows what happens when we die, but being judged by a supposedly all-powerful, all-knowing entity, that is also supposedly so loving towards his creations that he allows them to suffer and live in turmoil and agony just to test their faith in him, is bullshit. At least, that’s the idea of Christianity my extended family believes in, though the hispanic Catholic side does believe in a sense of half-assed forgiveness for any sin so long as a “Sorry, God” escapes your lips. But none of that crockpot of shit that is modern, commercialized religion really matters to me, much less religion as a whole. I just simply don’t believe.
Death on the other hand, it doesn’t matter if I believe in it or not. It’s not abstract, an idea that can be disputed in any way. It doesn’t require faith, it just simply is. It never goes out of fashion, it’s not cringe, everyone that’s been here before has done it. It’s the guaranteed fact that with life eventually comes death. Whether it’s your own or someone else’s death, one day you’ll have to wrestle with it. One second we’re here and the next we’re gone, ready or not. And the ‘second death’ is the real shit. People live on in memory, as we say, but when the memory fades then you fade with it. Some people are remembered for a lifetime, or several lifetimes, and some even make it into the history books to be remembered until even those stories fade into a footnote of a summarization of the 21st century. 8.2 billion people are alive right now, but humans have been around and dying for thousands of years and none of us will ever know about… well really any of them.
What will we be remembered for, if at all?
I’m struggling through a particularly difficult episode of depression, if that’s not abundantly clear. Suicidal ideation feels so cringe and naive, but it’s an unfortunate piece of the depression puzzle for me. Not so much the actual process of suicide, but leaning more on the ideation side of it. The concept of suicide but not the practice, you know? It’s a real Catch-22. Left to wonder about death and its ripples without ever being able to know. Unless you die, but then you’re dead and won’t know anything anymore.
When I’m buried in the ground, who will remember me? What will I be remembered for?
Depression and suicide are no strangers. Often the response to someone committing suicide is shock. Not just because that person is dead, but because to a lot of people it would seem out of the blue. Especially with those closest to the deceased, who would claim to have helped if only they knew the deceased was struggling, it would feel like such a blindside. But they seemed okay, but they were just laughing and joking with me that morning, but they this, and they that. But the truth is this: sometimes they really just cannot be helped.
It’s the most sinister side of depression: when you feel okay and happy, but know that those feelings are not real, that its just an illusion and the second you have a moment to yourself the illusion fades and it was really just the depression masquerading as any uplifting emotion, hiding just under the surface in a bright, shiny veneer. Then you start to question if you’ve ever been happy before, or if you have just made up the feeling as a placeholder for something you can’t explain. Real happiness becomes a cheap illusion. It comes and goes. But the depression is always there. It’s the incessant undercurrent of every moment, a riptide ready to drag you out to sea and drown you in its dark, crushing depths if it catches you at just the right moment. Tragic to end a life because of an illusion, a trick of the brain.
Lucky for me, my sense of spite is much more powerful than the depression. No fucking way I’m killing myself before becoming more successful than my enemies. Or at least seeing their downfall. Other than spite, I have things to live for that thankfully overpower the desire to end it all. I’ve gotten into physical media like cassette tapes and CDs, writing new D&D campaign ideas, getting back into baking, enjoying the sun again. I get to watch my dogs roll around in the fresh cut grass because they like the smell. I get to sit and write, listening to mixtapes on cassettes that I recorded for my friends. A bunch of little things that make the burden of depression a little lighter. It’s always here, but so am I.