I think it's the stop sign of death.
The falling off the cliff of life.
Nothingness.
So how do I deal with it? Think about it? Feel emotional about nothing?
I have a new sense perhaps from my recent dream. In it I saw my son Marty carry a huge stack of magazines and newspapers from a coffee table out of the house. That was it. I had spoken with him earlier the evening before. But that was just about as much reality as the dream had. I have no coffee table. I have no magazines or newspapers.
But I have thoughts of how my family will have the burden of clearing out my apartment after I die.
I have only that emotional sense of duty, to try to do more to lessen that burden.
But this morning, as I felt again the dream, I realized my after-life (whatever it might be or not be) is actually also something besides that last burden to my family. It's not final. The stop happens. Then I can continue on whatever road might be before me.
So I've got more choices after death.
Of course they (these choices) are all in the same imagination of my day to day life now. But it gives me something more to consider than the dread "final arrangements." Which I haven't made yet.
See Robertson's nice piece about his life as an Elder which I just posted earlier.
A few years ago, Marty and myself in St. Petersburg, FL