"Be Near Me When I Fade Away"*
The Romans would have carved into their gravestones:
non fui, fui, non sum, non curo--
“I was not, I was, I am not,
I don’t care.”
I might not care then, but Seneca had
a good point--it is sweet to be so dear to another
that you become dearer to yourself. But
Seneca was a stoic, and as such
disapproved of passion
and falling in love. Furthermore
I should not lead you to think that this meditation
is unselfish.
If death is like a long sleep,
or at least begins with a dream--which I think
it might because of the chemicals
in our brains--then I hope
when I die, my long dream is
of warm days spent
with no one but you. Not a nightmare,
one of the few where there is
no escape and you don’t
come to save me. Because when
I sleep, I can wake, and tell you
about the nightmare to make it better.
But if I die
and my dream is a nightmare
without you,
and nothingness after,
how will I tell you?
The end of my life
and beginning of my nonexistence
will be terror alone.
That is my current concept of hell.
Because I don’t believe
in transcendental afterlife,
I will until my death
tell you about every inane thing.
*title from Tennyson's "In Memoriam"