Personal Narrative: The Ambiguity Of John's Death

You stumble across a cemetery and impulsively decide to take look around. Once you step inside, you immediately notice hundreds of tombstones scattered around. You take a long breath and move tentatively around knowing you have walked into the valley of death surrounded by silent souls. You look around and see the hollow eyes of death, smell the coldness of death, and hear the silent whispers of death. Tombstone after tombstone you wonder if that woman had a sister, what that young boy died from, what the old man did for a living, or why that young girl deserved to die. Tombstone after tombstone you suffocate in sorrow. Tombstone after tombstone you decide to maneuver your way out of the cemetery, but the smell of death sticks to your skin
However, if all facts need be to dated, then we are back to square one and still need to determine when death is horrible. In that case, I stand with Kagan in stating that “death is bad for me when I’m dead”2. In my opinion, even when one ceases to exist, death can be awful on the premise that unawareness of what you are being deprived of doesn’t mean that you are not being deprived. Imagine there are two twin brothers, one brother, James, is immensely rich, among the 1% of wealthy people and the other brother, Jack, is James’ personal accountant. Jack steals about $5,000 from his brother every year for the past 10 years knowing James will not notice the missing money nor will he be suspicious. Indeed, James does not notice the subtle fluctuations in his money for the past ten years and is not in any way suspicious of Jack because he trusts Jack dearly. In the end, the James is being deprived of his money, whether or not he has no ample knowledge of it. This is to say that even in death, where we no longer exist, we are still being deprived of the very essence of life and living whether or not we are aware of