An Alternative to Christian Nonsense About Death & Dying

Christian Pollution: Polemics & Absurdities Part 3. From the Chapter Christianity: The Bullshit is Possible, (But Probably Not,) & Therefore Dishonest

Not to make light of love and loss, BUT . . .

Remembering my Christian upbringing based in fear and terror for the well-being of my masturbating immortal, imperiled soul — I keep reverting back to this memory. As adults it’s necessary for us to put away the childish bullshit that comforted us then and look for what really matters now.

Part 1. Sylvester and Bill

Our friend Billy’s elderly cat, Sylvester, is dying. Kidney disease. And it looks like he’ll be put down this afternoon.

Cat’s get old and die, of course: as do dogs, and people, and everything except God who may or may not even exist.

But this cat and his friend Billy and their love most assuredly exist, no doubt about it. And if you are reading this, you exist. And if you understand this, you understand love also.

In fact, come to think of it, even if you aren’t reading this you exist, as do I and as does everyone else who is alive now and soon or eventually will be dead like Sylvester the cat is soon going to be. And like all of us will be sooner or later.

Sylvester, so greatly loved, beloved just as all of us hope we are or wish we could be, or may one day realize, to our great sadness that we never have been which would make our situation even worse than poor old Sylvester’s who is going to die today.

The above was sent to Billy as a poem, the lines carefully, or maybe not so much carefully as intuitively broken at what felt like the right places.

Part 2 Sylvester and Billy and Me, a few days later:

And then Sylvester was no more, except in memories of being loved.

So, I sent my friend Billy my poem about his cat and his relationship and grief.

I worried that I might have stepped across a boundary of respect or privacy or some other line I shouldn’t have crossed. Sylvester and Billy were, after all, like an elderly married couple; what does one say to the survivor left after that kind of loss?

But then Billy sent back this message:

“Just read Sylvester’s poem. How lucky he was to have a friend as good as you. He rests so much easier now. And I do too.Thanks, Terry Trueman.”

In my opinion, moments don’t get any better than this for poets or friends or any other human beings or cats or every other kind of dying things.

And herein lies the catch to eternal life; there isn’t any outside of the love we get and the love we give during our all-too-brief time here. The best we can do is to laugh our asses off at the absurd joy possible in even the saddest moments, knowing that love is all that matters.

Billy knows it.

Sylvester knew it.