Fin

In 100 years, no one will know my name. No one will
know I swerve to avoid the wooly worms crawling across
the road in the autumn. No one will know how, as a child,
I would lay in bed and worry about my mother dying or being
taken away from me. No one will know I consider
my four-legged companions members of my family as
important as the bipedal ones. No one will know that
a single bar - or a single note - of music can wring every bit of
sorrow or joy from me, or to which songs that capacity belongs.
No one will know the battles that rage inside me, the sorrow, the
heart that breaks daily, the world seen through my eyes, the confusion
about which world is real, the despair and
desperation that are frequent companions.

The charred remains of my corporeal body will be
all that is left. The essence of who we are dies
with us, leaving nothing. People will walk by our
tombstones the way we walk through ancient graveyards,
gazing at stones whose etched words are worn away
by wind, rain, and snow. We will not even be memories,
or memories of memories. In time, there will be no one
to mourn who we were, and we will join the multitudes
who are now forgotten. In the end, what we did and
who we loved will be utterly meaningless. Everything
we strive for, everything we love, will be as the
ashes our lifeless bodies become.

For a brief moment, we exist, then are snuffed out again.
This is the fate of every plant, animal, our planet.Life
is the lie.