My father passed away yesterday morning. I was vacationing with my wife and son when I got the call from my step-mother. I can't say it was a huge shock, since he has been in generally poor health for awhile now and actually came very close to dying four or five years ago after suffering congestive heart failure and going into a coma for a week after being revived. In fact, the doctors at the time said there was very little chance he would recover and that we should all gather to say our final goodbyes. Which is to say I long ago reconciled myself to the fact of my father's mortality. The fact that he managed to recover last time also meant I had plenty of time over the last four years to rebuild some bridges with him and develop a much better relationship with him that we had when I was younger.
Still, his actual passing was sudden since he wasn't in the hospital or anything like that. In fact, I had just seen him the previous weekend and even talked to him on the phone the night before he died, just to chat. So, yeah, I wasn't really prepared for him to be gone like that despite everything.
All my friends and family are sending their condolences, and many of them are including words of comfort assuring me that my dad is now in a better place, that he knows that I love him, and that I will see him again some day. None of which, of course, I actually believe, being an atheist and all. But I do appreciate the thought nonetheless and certainly don't begrudge other people for clinging to beliefs that give them comfort or wanting to comfort me in turn.
How does one make sense of a loved one's death without a belief in God or an afterlife of some sort? Well, that part's pretty easy, I suppose. Everything that is born eventually dies, whether it be a fish, a cat, a horse or a man. It's all part of the natural order, and it would be awfully strange if people didn't die the way that everything else in nature does. Humans are obviously special, in the sense that we have a very highly developed intellect and a sense of self that provides us with a sense of our own mortality. But that knowledge does not exempt us from the natural order. So we don't need a belief in God or an afterlife to understand why people die or even why they die suddenly or why bad things happen to good people (and vice versa). It's just the way things are.
How does one deal with/accept/find comfort after a loved one's death without a belief in God or an afterlife of some sort? Ah, that's a much harder question and is probably one of the main reasons why there have been and still are so many different religions in the world. We don't want to let people go and can't bear the thought of never seeing them again, and therefore it's very comforting to think that death is only a temporary separation and that we will be reunited with out loved ones at a later time. As with many things, however, wishing and believing doesn't make it so.
As an atheist, I don't believe there is any extrinsic purpose to our lives, only the purpose we choose to give ourselves. From a purely biological standpoint, the purpose of all life is to live long enough to reproduce. Since we are intelligent, self-aware creatures, however, we have the ability to choose a greater purpose than that. We can choose to be good people and try to make the world around us a better place. We can choose to teach our children to be good people. We can choose to gain as much knowledge as possible about the world around us and to pass on that knowledge to others. We don't need a God or an afterlife to define our purpose.
For this reason, I take comfort in knowing that my dad lived his life according to his own terms. He chose to make a difference in the lives of others, and that choice will continue to have ripples throughout time long after he is gone. He will continue to live on in my memory and that of all the other lives he touched. He will live on in the genes he passed on to me and my siblings, who will in turn pass along to our children. I will certainly miss him and his absence leaves a void in my heart that may never go away. But I don't need a belief in fairy tales in order to accept that he is gone and take joy in the memories that I have of him.
As an aside, I often wonder what people really expect when they say they will see a dead loved one again some day. If there really were a heaven and my father were up there right now, what would he actually be like? Would his mind be in the state it was just before he died, a lot more mellow and kinder than he was when younger, but not nearly a sharp as he once was? Would he be the person he was 30 or 40 years ago, a lot more arrogant and perhaps less sympathetic? We all change throughout our lives, and none of us are the same person that we were years before. We all evolve and grow and change, and sometimes it's for the better and sometimes for the worse. Which version of us would actually be up there in heaven? Would it be a version other people would even recognize? I'm guessing people really expect our "souls" to be some sort of idealized version of ourselves, with all the good points and none of the flaws, but it's the flaws that often make us who we are. And some of the things that some people might consider to be flaws in us are perhaps seen as good points by others, and vice versa.
I'm sorry my dad is dead and I will miss him. I take comfort in knowing that he lived a good life and that I had a chance to know him both as a child and as a fellow adult.
