Cease

"It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more." Death is the unknown. That is why it is so feared. Can one truly believe that even those who claim to know what will happen without a shadow of a doubt, do not feel the creep of another idea go up their spine before death? Can one truly feel as though there is no other way to die besides the one originally believed? No matter how much of a persons life is based on one idea of death or another, there is always that doubt. I can feel it creep up my spine at times when everything is dark, and inexplicably the idea of death is far more prominent. As sure as I once was I somehow see different things appearing after I close my eyes for the last time. It must occur to all, at one time or another, the sensation of ending; completely ceasing in the world; that terrible idea that life simply goes out like the light in our eyes; the idea that the warmth of our skin, the beating of our heart, our own breath, is linked irrevocably to the existence of our soul, so that when all these fail, we simply slip away from everything. The idea of this death is the most terrifying of all, really. While some may fear being dragged to hell by some immense hoofed beast into a cavern of fire and pain, to be joined by the screaming Judas who clings to their skin as they attempt to pass by, they still must have at one time felt that terrible chill of nonexistence and shivered, almost wishing to feel Judas scratching at their skin rather than nothing at all. But the most horrific of all ends, I imagine, is that of those who have spent their whole life basing every decision on the existence of the afterlife. Yes, the most terrible of chills must be those suffered by the dying, who have punished themselves ceaselessly in order to achieve some sort of victory in death, only to have that ghastly moment, right before the end, in which they somehow believe that maybe it has all come to nothing, that they will be doomed to live over and over the same life full of punishment and restraint, never seeing the reward of their endeavors. That maybe everything is in fact pointless, and that there is no tangible God anywhere, that no matter how many lives we live, whether dead or alive, we will never grasp Him, and will forever be chasing the thought, as if wind blowing swiftly away from us.