The Difference between Life and Death

When you witness death at the moment you realize that everything stops instantly. It's like your computer crashing, going blank and dead. The hard drive is erased and never to be retrieved again. One instant there is life and an entire history of memories and learning and the next instant there is nothing, just black empty death.

Kuma was seizing. I didn't know if she was in pain so I got caught up in trying to stop her pain as quickly as possible. But, immediately after she died, the realization of death and no turning back hit me. My first thought was not, "oh now she is at peace/" no it was that she is nowhere, instantly she doesn't exist anymore and all her memory is erased as if she never existed before. So, does it really matter that she died in pain and then was killed. No, my first thought was an agonizing realization of what I had done and the finality of it. The reality hits you like a brick wall. My first reaction was, "Oh my God, what have I done?" She was breathing fine, this should not have happened.

Making what I now know was the wrong decision, haunts me all day, every day. The fact that I cannot go back and change it.

So where is Kuma now? Nowhere in nothingness. She does not exist. Every experience of her life, every enjoyment she had and everything she learned has been wiped out instantly. The heart stopped, the breath stopped and the brain got erased. She is no longer a dog, just a dead body of a dog. She can never come back, she can never see me again.

I can't tell Kuma that I love her and that I am sorry. It is hard to take and understand that she doesn't exist and because her memory is wiped out, she never existed.

The finality of death is uncomprehensible to me. It is like trying to understand infinity.

When my father's uncle was dying of cancer in a hosptial in New York he said to me, "life is not worth anything". I understood what he meant instantly. I understood it to mean that everything we think we strive for and everything we do is not worth anything when we die. He had just lost his wife while he was visiting Europe and came home to learn that she died and had been dead on the floor in their apartment for three days.

I remember an entire room full of people when I was younger celebrating Christmas. Out of that room almost all the people not longer exist. They are all dead. They only exist in my memory when I picture them and think about it, but when I die, they will be erased as well.

So, this life value and finality of death is almost too complex for me to try to understand. But, I do walk around thinking that with my partner, Kuma gone nothing I do matters anymore. I have nowhere to be and nothing that has to be done. Last week I rushed around the grocery store in record time getting what we needed. Tonight, there was no need to hurry, nothing I really needed to get. I bought some things to make for dinner then went out to the car where Kuma was not waiting for me and cried.

If there is another dimension, I would like to know. If Kuma has indeed gone to another dimension, then I would like to go there with her right now. But, the reality is that there is nothing, just a black empty hole. And eventually we will all go there and be forgotten. The good part about this is that we won't care if we are forgotten because we will not exist.