Letting Go

I just read Penn Jilette's book, GOD, NO and I was moved by his family's way of dealing with death. His dying mother had helium balloons by her bedside, and she told them that when she died she wanted them to take them outside and let them go, and to realize that they would never see those balloons again. It became a family tradition with them. I would like my families (blood and otherwise) to accept my passing (even though it's not going to happen til sometime after the universe stops expanding if I have anything to say about it) in a similar way.

As for me, I will be in Hell ... Heaven ... Paradise ... the Great Unknown ... the Other Side ... the Grey Havens ... Tanelorn ... and the Shadowland. None of these places exist, but then neither will I.

Facing the Reaper

"You get what everyone gets. You get a lifetime." ~ Death, THE SANDMAN, "The Sound of Her Wings" by Neil Gaiman.

I faced my mortality in a new way last night. The character I role played in our Dungeons and Dragons game died.

I turned 60 last October. I have a slightly enlarged heart, which is not life-threatening but does cause high blood pressure. Roulette has me on a low sodium diet because sodium causes water retention which exacerbates HBP. I need to exercise more, as fat shoving against organs and heart also raises blood pressure. That diagnosis didn't affect me much. Even the passing of Luta's brother didn't hit home as far as my own mortality was concerned. It took the death of an imaginary character to do that.

You have to understand, the way most RPGers play it's search the dungeon, kill the monster, find the treasure, repeat. Our amazingly talented and inventive DM (1) Orryn calls that a dungeon crawl, or Orc-and-pie (2), and when we role play, we role play. We create backstories and personalities for our characters. I played Taryn Darkeyes, girl thief (3) and tomb raider.

Here's Taryn's story:

"Mellisande Flesk was born to a wealthy family of Alchemists, a bright, blonde and black-eyed child. As is so often the case, prosperity was no guarantee of happiness. Mellisande's mother was narcissistic, self-absorbed and more concerned with her rank, social standing and money than with her three children. Her father disappeared when she was eight. Her older brother had become reclusive and secretive.

"Mellisande despised her father and her brother as weaklings. The only person she cared anything for was her little sister Kylie, although even they were never close. At age 15 she pilfered some of her brother's necromantic artifacts and scrolls and sold them to a sorcerers' guild. She stashed most of her profits in a cave known only to her.

"When Mellisande was 17, Kylie was struck with a wasting illness. She half suspected it was brought on by neglect and depression, but she returned to her cave, took some of her loot and bought rare medicines for Kylie. These she presented to her mother, who at the time was planning to attend a gala festival in a distant kingdom, and was intent on debuting her coming-of-age daughter there. Mellisande wanted nothing to do with it. She hid out in her cave. After one month, she returned home. She found that her younger sister had died. Her mother, absorbed by her plans for the festival, had never given Kylie the medications.

"Mellisande knew she could not stay there another minute. She helped herself to a few sacksful of the family riches and left for good.

"No sooner had she reached the nearest city than she was set upon by a local gang, beaten and robbed of all but the profits she had stashed in her cave. She limped back to the cave to heal. She lived two years in the wood, leaving her cave only for occasional forays for supplies. She picked up a few wilderness skills and learned to be self sufficient. Finally she went to the city to live as a street thief. After several run-ins with the law, she apprenticed herself to a local thief. In her spare time she learned to appraise magical relics for their resale value, and changed her name and looks.

"Mellisande was now Taryn Darkeyes, and she used one of her father's potions to permanently dye her yellow hair black. By age 25 she has travelled far from her erstwhile home. Taryn specializes in stealing and reselling magical artifacts. She carries several weapons she uses to intimidate bigger, stronger foes -- not to say that she isn't good at using them as well. She is resolved to be tougher than anyone she knew and to survive at all costs.

"She has no use for laws, loyalties or morals. Taryn worships no gods. The only ones she has any respect for are gods who represent nature and travel."

I gave her a pretty miserable life.She started the game as a bitter and lonely person, joined the adventurers' party in hopes of earning enough money and finding enough salable magic items to retire away from the world. My eventual plans were to retire her after the adventure as a druid, at peace in the forest.

She died in a battle suddenly and unexpectedly, taking cold damage from monsters called frostshades, fell unconscious and failed the final dice throw. She never even got to say any sarcastic last words.

We have a board at Prismatic Tsunami where we post in character. I wrote down her imaginary last words. I didn't expect to publish another fiction piece so soon after last week's but I'll let you read it. Remember Taryn is as much an atheist as you can be in a world where the gods are real.
~
So, I'm dead. Didn't see that coming.

Where am I? It looks like an endless plane of ash, flat, no mountain, hill or crevice as far as I can see. No stars in the sky. Nothing moving; nothing here to move. Is this where you go when you've abandoned all the gods, the ones who punish and those who comfort?

All I ever wanted out of death was rest.

What am I? A shade, an immortal soul, the last sparks of thought in a dying brain?

Don't know how the gang's gonna make it without me. Ah, who am I kidding? Ji will get them through. He's the only one who believes in something besides himself, er, herself. Arathorn, despite his delusion that he's the boss of us, is a survivor. Arathorn. We never liked each other,yet it was Arathorn who carried my body out and did his best to revive me. Ulfgar can blunder through anything and Aust will never get close enough to peril to be in real danger.

They'd better miss me, though.

Hell, I'll miss me.

I hope they can use my magic stash. Well of course they will. That bunch'll loot my body before it's cold.

Cold. That's odd. I died of cold but I don't feel cold now. I don't feel anything.

What's that over there?

Is that -

~


Farewell, Taryn.

It wasn't till I composed that piece that it hit me how close to being me Taryn was. I went to bed last night, started to compose Taryn's post, and could not sleep for tears.

When I fail my final dice roll, it'll probably be like hers - never knowing what hit me. It occurs to me that if I don't get any last words in I'd better let my friends and family know now how much I love and respect them, and that I'm happy with my life here and now.

It's not silly to me mourning a make believe character, because I don't think she's the only one I'm mourning.

What did Taryn see?

Could have been anything, an eddy in the ash, a tear in her eye, oblivion roaring in, a god, a soul-devouring monster, or Kylie. I'm not telling because I don't know. God or an afterlife may be in doubt, but I believe there is always Mystery.

As Heinlein said in THE NOTEBOOKS OF LAZARUS LONG: "Soon enough you will know."



(1) Dungeon Master, the person who runs the game.
(2) Monster and reward.
(3) A thief in D&D is the character who uses stealth, opens locks and disarms traps.

The Summerlands and Beyond

"Behind the walls of the Pélori the Valar estab- lished their domain in that region which is called Valinor; and there were their houses, their gardens, and their towers. In that guarded land the Valar gathered great store of light and all the fairest things that were saved from the ruin; and many others yet fairer they made anew, and Valinor became more beautiful even than Middle-Earth in the Spring of Arda and it was blessed, for the Deathless dwelt there, and there naught faded nor withered, neither was there any stain upon flower or leaf in that land, nor any corruption or sickness in anything that lived; for the very stones and waters were hallowed." ~JRR Tolkien, THE SILMARILLION

"May it be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out." ~Galadriel

"I look forward to the day when your people join us beyond the rim. We will wait for you. ” ~ Lorien, BABYLON 5

"There is no conclusive evidence of life after death. But there is no evidence of any sort against it. Soon enough you will know. So why fret about it?" ~ Robert A Heinlein, THE NOTEBOOKS OF LAZARUS LONG

"Since life and death are each other's companions, why worry about them? All beings are one." (Chuang-Tzu)

A friend of mine passed last week. He was a young man, bright and intelligent, working for his Masters in Literature. We called him the God of Computers, because he could tell us how to solve any computer problem. During his recent hospital stay, he fixed the nurses' computers in exchange for Kit Kat bars. We used to gather to watch STARGATE on Friday nights. Since I lost my car, I wasn't able to visit him as much as I'd like to. I will miss him.

The Egyptians were about the first to have a complex afterlife system. Reaching the paradisal Fields of Aaru was quite a task: you had to be mummified, weighed against a feather of the goddess Ma'at, and pass a long journey to gates guarded by demons. The Norse had Valhalla, where warriors fight and hack each other to bits eternally, restored in time for the evening feasts. The Aztec paradise was also for warriors, and people who died of old age or disease went to dark Mictlan or the brighter Tlalocan. To the Greeks the Underworld was a land where souls lived as bodiless shades. The Celts had the Summerlands, a place of eternal peace and beauty where everyone except really bad souls lived and only certain great heroes ever returned to the Earth. Judaism named the underworld Sheol, a part of which was Gehenna, a place of fire that purified souls and destroyed evil.

Jesus talked in parables using the Jewish myth-system as a metaphor for spiritual anguish and cleansing, but he was taken literally, and Hell became an eternal torment - a horrible thing to ascribe to a loving God.

In Eastern religions there are several hells, also seen as places of atonement for bad karma. Karma is also worked off in reincarnations. Eastern beliefs, though, are more concerned with enlightment than places of rest or punishment. Samsara, the cycle of life, called in Vedanta "the state of becoming," is a path of learning that leads to moksha, "freedom from limitations."

Modern pagan systems like Wicca have melded the Celtic afterlife with reincarnation, viewing the Summerlands as a place of rest and reflection between lifetimes.

In THE LORD OF THE RINGS, Valinor is very like the Summerlands. It is reserved for the immortal Elves and can only be reached from the Grey Havens by the Straight Road. Frodo and his fellows are given special dispensation to live there after their adventures.

Most modern popular myths use traditional versions of the afterlife, but there are some new ideas.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, before Tarzan, wrote UNDER THE MOONS OF MARS. His hero John Carter basically dies on Earth and is transported bodily to Mars. Barsoom (the Martian name for their planet) was unlike anything NASA found, with dry sea bottoms under two moons, swordsmen, four-armed green warriors, airships and princesses. ERB meant it as fantasy, and he never said directly that Carter had died, but it did bring up the idea of being reborn on other worlds.

Michael Moorcock took this a quantum leap forward. His Eternal Champion exists in many dimensions of the "Multiverse." Elric of Melniboné, Dorian Hawkmoon, Corum Jhaelin Irsei, Jerry Cornelius, Erekosé and many more are all facets of one being. In such a system the death of one incarnation would not mean the end of the person.

My Christian Science chaplain once described death by saying that, while you seem dead to the rest of the world, to you nothing has changed; you just go on living. That suggests not only the Taoist belief that life and death are merely two aspects of one being, Yin and Yang, but also concepts from quantum physics like Schroedinger's Cat, where the cat is both dead and alive until observed. More on that in later blogs.

All I know is that if there is a Summerlands or a Valhalla, their computers are working now!