It's daunting to conceive of a person's existence evaporating and ceasing to return forever. Things can be destroyed and their existence blotted out. For instance, the four towns erased to create the Quabbin reservoir. But the towns still exist in a sense, they are still there, just mostly underwater now. If you drained the reservoir you could even resurrect the towns and repopulate them. It would be a massive undetaking but it was a massive undertaking to create, so it is not absurd to imagine the creation being dismantled.

But a person cannot be brought back. Nothing imagineable can return anyone to life. My current realization of this transparent truth feels strange and new. We live for only a short period, yet we exist-not forever. Our mere years not only pale in comparison to an eternity of nothingness, they don't even compare at all--they amount to nothing, swallowed by the vastness of infinity. Such that there is no existence. I fear for all those near death, even those who claim they are not afraid--the fear will grip you in between your last and next-to-last breaths. The walls of denial will crumble and the armies of dread, terror and uncertainty will come rushing toward you.

The only solace comes with religion. Those blessed people who were indoctrinated young with the ridiculous notion that there is an afterlife, reincarnation, bearded-guy-in-clouds. Perhaps the terror doesn't grip them because their minds believe. Perhaps their faith necessarily wavers when the body and mind die and thus the terror hits them just before the end. Either way, children should be force-fed some sort of belief in the impermanence of death. That way it sticks with them their entire life like child molestation. Even the ancient Greeks' notion of the afterlife, that everyone goes to the underworld and suffers eternally, is more comforting that the truth--we just die and that's it. At least the Greeks went somewhere and they were together. Perhaps there was a glimmer of hope, because the Gods were at least capable of meddling with them.