The Grim Reaper at the Door

I don't mean to be morbid but I've been thinking a lot lately about mortality. I found out yesterday that my English Professor from Hampshire College recently died at the age of 40 from Leukemia leaving behind a wife and children and a life only half lived. Looking through the Hampshire memorial section, I found three women ex-hampshire grads who all died last September in freak traffic accidents within 5 days of eachother. All we're young, recent grads, 21 or 22 years old and apparently well loved (although not known by me). I'm currently waiting for news on another person, a family friend to find out the extent of the Cancer eating into him (and the Dr's seem to be stringing him along - but that's another story all together.) Heard an anecdote at work the other day about a woman from Donegal, 32 years old, who felt ill a few weeks ago and died of Leukemia within a few days, again leaving small children behind.

We try to fool ourselves. I suppose we have to in order to function. We have to tell ourselves it won't happen to us. But who's to say. I sometimes wake up in the morning and think, today could be the last day of my life and I just don't know it yet. I was reading the blog of a friend this morning who was talking about the nature of fear and how sleeping outside in the pitch dark with nature's sounds all around made her think about the rise of religion and superstition and all the rest of it. We need to think that we're not alone in the dark. We need to think that our teddybear nightlight is powered by more than just electricity and that our mother will protect us from anything that might be lurking under the bed.

It would be so much easier to believe in a god in the sky, to really believe in that old lady phrase, "It was just her time," to be able to look up and think that there is a master plan, a method to the madness but I can't help thinking, when I lie in bed at night that shit just happens, randomly and for no good reason. Children are left without parents, Parents are left without children, grave injustices are perpetuated all over the world by the hands of other humans or the hands of fate or just plain bad luck.

My question is this, How do you live with this knowledge? How do you go about the mundane details of your day knowing how fragile and precious your life really is? How do you let the people you love walk out the door, knowing the world is out there for better or worse? I've always been a sensitive, ruminating type person but I can't possibly be the only person who thinks about these things and millions of people get out of bed every morning without a god to hold their hand, myself included. For those of us who don't prescribe to a religion with a big pappa in the clouds, who live without that teddy bear nightlight, where do you find your meaning, comfort and solace? How do you make sense of the monsters under the bed who are so much worse than you ever thought they were as a child?