I thought I would be clever. I went to bed just at 9:00 last night since I was starting to fall asleep. Just before midnight I woke to pee (for the third time), and decided to stay up a while. My lower gut is still churning, even after a good long trip to the toilet early in the evening. I just took a couple simethicone capsules, hoping that will break up the gas and other things trying to explode inside me.

On one of my bathroom trips, BigBoy came down the hall to investigate. I asked if he was ready to go outside. He knows the “outside” word. He trotted back to his place under the coffee table, where he now still lies in slumber. So unfair he gets to sleep through my churning misery.

Later today (Sunday) will be the memorial service for my former father-in-law. All my kids are there now in Arizona, probably meeting up with many of their cousins, aunts and uncles, and other relatives. I don’t do funerals very well, anyway, and I would not feel welcome at this one even if I wanted to go, which I don’t. The last one I attended was for my son-in-law’s father back in 2010. Before that was for my grandson in October 2001. Too much preaching and superstition for me.

I suppose a lot of people find comfort in the idea that a loved one has gone on “to a better place”, that they’ve rejoined others who have gone before, and they’ll be waiting for us to make our own passage in due time. I don’t take comfort in that idea. I don’t believe in life after death, of any sort. When the body dies, our consciousness dies; every mode of awareness or sensation dies when the body dies. I don’t believe we have a ‘soul’ that continues on, traveling in some spiritual plane.

Like the meme that circulates now and then on Facebook:

“What happens when you die?”
“The hospital gives your bed to someone else.”

Or:

“What happens when you die?”
“Lots of things, but none of it will involve you.”

Maybe that seems cynical. It’s the only view that makes sense to me. Life is a journey; I’m taking the cynic route.

My body will decompose, and the atoms that make up my body will be recycled into the earth to become nutrients for some other living thing. That’s what Nature tells us happens. I have no expectation of leaving this body and finding some cosmic ‘justice’ to be meted out — no punishment for my human shortcomings, nor compensation for wrongs done to me in this lifetime, nor special rewards for anything really good I might have done.

I was expecting electrical plugs to have been replaced in the kitchen yesterday (Saturday), but it might happen later today. I don’t know.

This is my haggard-looking self in the middle of the night; this being Sunday, I will likely get my haircut and shave later today.

The aspirin and simethicone are beginning to work toward calming the lower belly. I don’t like how I feel, but I am slowly learning what is happening and what I can do about it …. well, sometimes, anyway.