to shuffle off this mortal coil

I think that my father died when I was thirteen, even though I still go to see him every so often. I realized this after a day at school, when I hadn't heard anything from him for a while and had no idea what in God's name he was doing. So I realized that he had died. I moved in with him a few months later, and I lived there for two years, struggling through my Freshman and Sophomore years.. Physically, of course, my father was still very much alive, and still is. He was also an alcoholic, and a rather neglectful father, rarely having any money and even more rarely giving any real assistance to me. But my father was dead, had probably been dead for a while longer than I had realized. My grandfather also died when I was thirteen, but in the physical sense as well. I think I succumbed that year too. It wasn't until the summer of 1998 that I came back to life, and only recently that I realized how long these people, and I, had been dead.

Shakespeare might have put it better than anyone else in Hamlet, Act I, Scene ii: "All things die." It's a true statement. My favorite store, the Time Machine, a wonderful little shop that catered to anime, role-playing games, and comics - three things that easily rated on the top of my hobby list - shuffled off this mortal coil about a year ago. Of course, that death passed with much less sadness than that of my father, or my grandfather, or for that matter, mine. They had a big sale the last day, so I went down and spent more money than I should have to get more stuff than I have ever gotten in one trip to a store subsequently. Then, my cousin and I both took all our impulse purchases home, and sang a mangled version of Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On", and enjoyed a bit of a laugh. It wasn't until that night that I really let myself fully acknowledge that the store was no longer among us. It made me really depressed, and only slightly irrationally.

Ever since my parent's marriage passed away when I was five, I have hated death. Some people think of death as a release. I hold a different view. Death, as Chaucer put it in the Pardoner's Tale, is a thief. Death robs us of something. And once something is dead, it's gone. It might seem like a simple statement, but think about it. Something dead is gone, as in never any more of it - ever. You can remember it, compile your memories, and even sometimes try to recreate it, but it is still gone forever, and the closest you can ever come is pale imitations of it. The store that took the place of the Time Machine was called Milk & Quackers. It was a hobby and crafts store. I hated that store, and thought it unworthy of having the Time Machine's space. It closed recently. I was extremely upset about it. It might seem irrational, but seeing it close meant two things had bit the dust - a store, and a dream. The owner wanted to run that store, but he could not, and that dream of his had been killed as a result. I hate seeing something, anything, die. I hate seeing dreams die, especially, since I have so many of them.

I know that it's important to move on, and that things have to die for us to keep growing. I recognize that fact, and I know that if my father hadn't passed on into that sleep of death, I would never have reached the level of maturity to which I have been forced. The clinical, rational side of my brain knows all of this, and accepts it. But the other half of my brain, the emotional (and infinitely more enjoyable) side, still wants to keep everything alive, to make sure that nothing dies in this world. It's that part of me that keeps going, the part that keeps building things even when I know full well that they will die like everything else does. My heartbeat keeps me from being a corpse, but my hope of keeping everything else from yielding to the grim reaper, including my own dreams, is what keeps me alive. It's what my father lost, and that's why he's in, as Prince Hamlet said, "..the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveler returns", even though his heart still beats and his lungs still take in the dry air, laden with his dead promises.

The video game Final Fantasy VI is one of the greatest pieces of storytelling in existence, by my reckoning. Right near the end of the game, it makes a very good point. The main villain, Kefka, asks the heroes, "Why do you keep living in this dead world? Why do people build things they know will be destroyed?"" The response is simple, but poignant: "It's not the sum total of one's life that's important. It's the day-to-day struggles, the personal victories, the daily celebration of life... and love." I try to keep that in mind. As long as I keep my dreams alive, keep them imbued with the stuff that makes life worth living, as long as I still care about the balance between life and death, I know that my existence in this world is worth something, even if it's only a small amount. Someday, my father will die in body, and maybe then his spirit will meet up with him once again. I hope so, I really do. As for me... I choose life over death - for me, for my friends, for my enemies, for everyone and everything. Because the only way that we can find out for certain why something is important is to see what we lose when it dies. And once it's dead... it's gone. I don't know what, exactly, I am important for. But I will not fade silently into death. And, just maybe, that might be the importance in and of itself.