Tag: death

“You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. …

On By Christina's WordsIn Quote5 Comments

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly. Amen.

– Aaron Freeman, “You Want a Physicist to Speak at Your Funeral” (via NPR: Planning Ahead Can Make a Difference in the End)

“What’s Not Here” by Rumi

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

I start out on this road,
call it love or emptiness,
I only know what’s not here.

Resentment seeds, backscratching greed,
worrying about outcome, fear of people.

When a bird gets free,
it does not go for remnants
left on the bottom of the cage.

Close by, I’m rain.  Far off,
a cloud of fire.   I seem restless,
but I am deeply at ease.

Branches tremble.  The roots are still.
I am a universe in a handful of dirt,
whole when totally demolished.

Talk about choices does not apply to me.
While intelligence considers options,
I am somewhere lost in the wind.

“What’s Not Here” by Rumi (translation by Coleman Barks), A Year with Rumi: Daily Readings by Coleman Barks

“People disappear when they die. …

On By Christina's WordsIn Quote

“People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in the ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“Death is Smaller Than I Thought” by Adrian Mitchell

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry2 Comments

My Mother and Father died some years ago
I loved them very much.
When they died my love for them
did not vanish or fade away.
It stayed just about the same,
only a sadder colour.
And I can feel their love for me,
same as it ever was.

Nowadays, in good times or bad,
I sometimes ask my Mother and Father
to walk beside me or to sit with me
so we can talk together
or be silent.

They always come to me.
I talk to them and listen to them
and think I hear them talk to me.
It’s very simple –
nothing to do with spiritualism
or religion or mumbo jumbo.

It is imaginary. It is real. It is love.

“Death is Smaller Than I Thought” by Adrian Mitchell, from In Person: 30 Poets