When you are a child you don’t think about death.  In your late teens and 20s you don’t think death applies to you.  By the time you reach your late 60s like me you have probably lost your parents, aunts and uncles and several friends and cousins.   You start thinking about you own mortality.  I just was looking at a list of celebrities that died in 2013 and suddenly realized that half of them were near my age or younger.  I have had several friends who have died young, some from cancer, some from accidents and a lovely woman who died of a massive heart attack at 45.   I just learned yesterday that one of my few living aunts and her son, my cousin,  were operated on for colon cancer within a day of each other.

I am an atheist so I don’t believe in heaven or hell.  Life after death consists of the good deeds you accomplished before you died.  That drives me to do more good deeds.  If no one else remembers that’s OK, I will remember as I take my last breath.

Sorry for this downer post the day after Christmas but it is a subject we prefer to ignore but shouldn’t.