death do us part…by Nigel Dawe Farm produce

endearing, if not inspiring responses to the ultimate of curtain call happenings. Our lives exponentially gain something the very moment we acknowledge the fact they are finite, and will not last forever.

Quite the contrary, in the broader scheme of things, even the longest human life passes in the blink of an eye. Which is perhaps not as quick as the shortest lifespan of all, that belongs to the mayfly – its lived existence ranges from a few minutes up to the ripe old age of 24 hours. And whether you’re a human being or a humble mayfly, as the English novelist Terry Pratchett once gleaned, “It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it’s called Life.” And this is something none of us should ever lose sight of at any stage.

While life is arguably the most knowable of things; death is perhaps the least directly fathomable of experiences, and lends itself to all sorts of embellishments and cultural mystifications. As if to offset the finality of it all, us humans have been consoling ourselves with notions of an afterlife for as long as we’ve been able to elevate and mix meaning with words. I’d love to think that our lives go on after we die, but if they did then surely the most outspoken of religious zealots would’ve returned by now to tell us all loudly about it. Perhaps Franz Kafka was being more than merely sardonic when he once reflected, “The meaning of life is that it stops.”