Hope

It’s been a while. Too long. 

Thanksgiving was hard. I won’t even write about it. I just felt numb. The Saturday after we had a bunch of your friends over and that was better. Telling stories. Laughing. Feeling closer to you. Gemma, James and I were up until 4am. It reminded me of past holidays, but more somber - no dancing around the house and singing at the top of our lungs after Mom and Dad went to sleep. How lucky we got to do that into adulthood? Spend holidays like we were still kids. Even last year we opened presents together Christmas morning - the four of us. Each with piles under the tree as Mom and Dad looked on. Not this year though. Or ever again.

I felt a bit better the past 2 days. And then immediately guilty for it. The sadness and disbelief haven’t dimmed, but I get glimmers of what it might be to return to normal life. I’m not sure I want to. I don’t even know what normal means. I’m leaving New York on December 9th. When I’m not here I guess it will be easier to imagine you are. That scares me. 

I don’t know how much longer I’ll write for. But it’s still helping. I’ve gotten such a great response, from so many people. But not from the person I’m writing to. Not from you. The longer I go without a response the less I feel like you’re hearing me. I want to believe you are.  

I keep wondering whether you’re out there. But my worldview gives me whiplash and I feel confused. We were raised Catholic. I remember believing. But doubt crept in high school and by the end of college I was a militant atheist. I gave Dad a copy of “God is Not Great” by Richard Dawkins, insisting he read it. I’m not so sure in either direction anymore. You weren’t either. You were never one to proselytize, but I know you didn’t believe.

In your journal you mention we’re “all racing towards oblivion.” Oblivion. In the 2 minutes after your brain stopped working all of the knowledge and skills you had accumulated, all of your memories, your personality - they left. At least from this world. It’s insane that we need continuous functioning to keep a life force burning. Even a few minutes blip and it fades to nothing. It’s just as crazy that this works for 80+ years in so many people. 

And then what? We understand so little about what the hell all this is. Maybe you are still out there. Some form of your consciousness persists. I actually can’t stand when people do gymnastics with physics to justify an afterlife. “Energy is neither created nor destroyed.” So your “energy” must be somewhere. But I know you are not the energy that law of thermodynamics refers to. Real destruction occurred.

But other lessons I cling to. Apparently information is also conserved. One article said evidence of your life will persist until the end of the universe. And do you remember “The Beginning of Infinity” by David Deutsch? I think you read a good chunk. If you take quantum physics seriously, there are universes where this did not happen. Where we get to grow old together. Reality is constantly splitting and everything that can happen, does. This version of me landed in a shitty universe where you are not. But the universes where we are together are just as real. What I would give to make that leap…

Reality is stranger than fiction. I see room for a reunion. Maybe not Life after Death but also not Nothing. I have hope.