It Probably Sucks to get Buried After You Die
You can’t really take my word for it though. I don’t have any particular memories with dying so I could be completely off-base. But I think it would suck to get buried after you die. There can’t be anything worse.
It’s like a dead tree that just falls over in the middle of the forest. There it is, unceremoniously plopped on the earth and it’s just going to stay there until erosion breaks it all away. Time will go on, and the weather patterns will keep going round and round in Joni Mitchells’s circle game. It’ll stay in this spot for decades, centuries, or however long it takes to decompose. Maybe a bird will rip off some pieces to make a nest, or some free-spirited soul will take a chunk for his air plant terrarium. However, for the most part, it will be stationary in the middle of the forest with all the time and space it needs to break apart – molecule by molecule, particle by particle. No force on earth will change this course, and all the tree can do is align itself with the stillness. Resign itself to the silence.
Sounds horrible.
And this lucky world will keep on spinning and it’ll keep on winning. The tree then transforms into soil and grime. Eventually, the ground starts to produce shoots - new life, new greens, and new baby trees sprouting from the decomposed old tree materials. They will grow, thicken, and endure, until they too, fall on the forest floor and the process can start over again.
When you wrap your head around the full implication of these events, it dawns on you that everything on the planet is made up of the same molecules and cosmic soot that were around at the very beginning of time. We are literally made from the decomposed materials of the beings before us. We were nourished, and we sprouted, and we will endure until the ground claims us.
This interconnectedness surpasses any boundaries or constructs we have created to help us understand life. The limit of existence is like the final answer in the Mathletes competition in Mean Girls – it does not exist. Your very cells contain the wisdom of all the people before you, and every single damn thing that they endured. The word ‘microscopic’ is fragmentary when describing your existence with relation to the expanse of the universe.
Man, that’s so much liberation - who the hell wants that??
It means that no matter what unfolds and no matter how tightly you grip the steering wheel, the sun will keep rising without you, the dust will keep settling around you, and everything that really matters carries on after you’re gone. You’ll be endless. This body you currently inhabit will take on new forms so that the story written in your DNA continues like a Star Wars franchise that just won’t fucking end.
It will get richer, more layered, and someone else in the future whose existence your mind cannot fathom will rely on all of the instincts, intuition, and ancestral knowledge that you rely on now. And at that point, you would have made a contribution to it.
So yeah. Getting buried into the earth after I die? No thank you. I don’t want any part of it.
TJ Borile is a freelance writer, small business owner, and areola model. He has a certification in Disregarding Patriarchal Bullshit, a PhD in the 1994 Miss Universe Pageant, and once, he fell down the stairs and accidentally got certified in Zumba. In his spare time, he likes to sit, breathe, and be a referee for a pillow fighting wrestling league.