Between posts about drunken superheroes and Star Trek, I’ve allowed “Take it from Snee” to devolve into a frivolous, silly column. This is not good and must be remedied.
After all, it’s featured on a Web site called SeriouslyGuys — not Whimsically nor Fancy-Freeily, but Seriously. That is why I’ve decided to look at a very serious topic that deserves a straightforward, intellectual examination: what happens when we die.
It’s an important topic because, unless you’re one of the many bots trying to spam this site with porn, you are going to die. Worse yet, everyone who has died has refused to come back …. Well, there was this one guy, but we’re still arguing about what he saw.
So, I know you’re afraid of dying and the unknown, and that’s why you can take it from Snee that this is exactly what happens when you die.
The Moment of Death
For some, the moment of death will be painful: a gunshot, failing to run with the bulls, licking the third rail on a dare.
For others, it will be startling, but painful: waking up in the middle of the night unable to breathe, a sudden drop at the top of a stairway, a stingray barb to the heart.
And for still others, it will be as planned out as the family vacation to Disney World … and as painful: “We eat breakfast with the characters at 8, then get in line for Space Mountain at 8:15, which means we’ll get through the line and off the ride by 2, then …”
The point is that your moment of death will arrive and you will die, beginning our journey, and it will hurt.
The Realization of Death
After the moment of death, you awaken as if from a bad dream. (“Oh, thank god I didn’t really hang myself while masturbating!”) As you get up, you might notice that — though you have lifted the top part of your torso — your cold, lifeless torso is still on the ground!
Or, you might not. So you walk to the bathroom to lift or lower the toilet seat and it doesn’t budge!
But maybe you’re not at home (people die at only the best parties), so you’re trying to get out of bed without waking up last night’s hookup and she doesn’t wake up and ask where you’re going!
For the extra clueless, a bright light will finally appear. This is the moment — the metaphysical light bulb — that you’ve finally realized you’re dead.
“The Tunnel”
So, the bright light has appeared. You may be tempted to follow it into a tunnel. It’s a perfectly reasonable response that indicates you have the instincts of a moth. Perhaps you’d like to chase a ball I’ve pretended to throw (but cleverly cupped behind my back), too? Way to be a genius.
You can chase that bright light all you want. All you’re gonna do is go crazy and think dead relatives are talking to you. That’s not Heaven. You can’t do Hallucination Grandma (which may or may not be an improvement over Halitosis Grandma).
Or, you could move on.
Getting Your Bearings
This is the important first real step to being dead: establishing what you can and cannot do and if you have boundaries.
You cannot open doors. You can, however, walk through them. Let’s avoid any future embarrassment by not flailing wildly at doorknobs that exist at the material plane of existence.
You can talk to the living. They cannot hear you. Avoid psychics as they will only translate your words into money schemes. (They will not cut you in on the money, which you can no longer use.)
If you are, in fact, able to manipulate material objects, should you do it? On the one hand, it sure seems to freak people out by moving their keys and opening drawers they’re sure they closed. On the other, it’s a drawer. Is this really how you want to spend the afterlife, celebrating the motor accomplishments of a four-year-old? If anything, you’re just encouraging bad television.
Should you go to changing rooms/spy on the hot neighbor lady with enormous breasts in the shower? Yes. Yes you should. We’ll wait here while you do that.
Picking a Destination
Now that you’ve had your early ghost adventures, it’s time to decide where to go.
No, I’m not talking about Heaven or Hell. Those are as real as Hades, Valhalla and Elysium (e.g., not at all).
Now that you’ve removed the batteries from all the remote controls, your choices are limited to a) becoming a homebody and b) traveling.
Homebodies are typically dickish, if not outright dicks. They sit at home, even though they have the time and ability to go anywhere they want, and reclaim their old bed. And if the living do anything they don’t like, they throw a hissy like that weird kid who refused to leave her dorm room. (Did she even go to class?)
You ever notice how sites of historic significance send shivers up your spine, but pictures of those places do not? That’s because of all the dead tourists.
So, yes, you could finally see Versailles. Or Manchu Pichu. Or finally kiss the Blarney Stone without contracting herpes.
Hell, you’re dead. You can go to the moon if you want. It’s not like you breathe air. Or walk along the bottom of Loch Ness until you find a plesiosaur. If you’re really keen on the whole Hell thing, then you can go sit in the Earth’s molten core.
Saying Goodbye
We already established that the living cannot hear you, so it’s not for their benefit when you say goodbye and hit the dusty trail.
Just for a lark, you should go to your funeral. There’ll be some nice things said about you (mostly bull####), and you get watch your old body with all the stretch marks and pox scars get burned up or buried like cat poop.
It’s time to say goodbye to all those restraints you had in life and really start enjoying yourself. There’s no one to answer to, no schedule to adhere to and no AIDS.
And wasn’t AIDS a bummer?