(* I touched on some subjects here, but this is really not a final piece. I want to expand on lots more thoughts)
Death has been something that eats away at my mind since the day I figured it all out. I have accepted that I will one day die, and that lots of people around me will do the same someday (If I live to see it happen). For a while, I was convinced that it was selfish for people to grieve when a loved one had passed. How could I be sad? I'm not the one who turned up dead. If I were magically able to see the people who came, I would want to see them happy. Our time on this Earth only lasts so long. Don't spend it sad.
You can leave this Earth by 3 major means. Through sickness, through accident, or via murder. Each one of these can put a period on the sentence that is your life. Some are instant, some wait around on you. Either way the result for yourself is the same, gone.
Sickness can include many things. There is cancer, disease, or infection. Cancer can be beat, but if all hope is lost, they give you a death appointment. 6 months, a year. Sometimes your told multiple years. Or that your life will simply be shortened. Disease can take a while also. Infection can be more immediate, such as not being able to overcome the flu, or measles.
Accident can be divided in two ways, your fault, their fault. You can be the one negotiating a turn in your car, and you miss your mark. You'll go flying off the side of the road into the multiple foot drop below. Or it can be their fault. They fell asleep at the wheel. They were drunk. Your cars meet at 55 mph head to head. In our society that can be merged together with murder, but the point here is that they did not attempt to murder you. They just screwed up.
Murder is when someone ends your life by their own hands. They perform an action that leads to your death, and that is what they wanted to happen. Maybe you get yourself caught up running drugs, and your stealing money. Perhaps your straying from your marriage and the other person finds out. You might have a huge life insurance policy and someone is looking to collect. State executions are legal murders. Murder is a near immediate way to die.
Speaking of life insurance, they must think about the topic of death quite often. It's a gamble, betting on if you will live long or die. If you live a long time, they make money. If you die quickly, they will lose out. If x amount of people sign up, and this percentage do this and the other percentage do that, I should be able to make this percentage of money on top of that.
To statisticians, life is calculable. You'll see figures on birth rates, death rates. Life expectancy is a big one. I always reflect upon myself and imagine how much longer I can live without the sickness of old age catching up to me. Assuming no murder or accidents claim me prematurely, I should live into my mid 80s. Stats and numbers play big into how these people also see how well a country is doing. The higher the better.
Trying to wait out death until your body gives out can be a gamble. Since I have reached the age of 26, I have witnessed many people in advanced stages of life. People that I have known for a long time, reduced back to infancy due to the brain weakening over time. I'm not sure what they think, or even if they can. One thing is for sure, they don't appear to know what is going on all of the time.
I always want to record things in my life to preserve myself for the future. The problems with that are great in number. First off, you need your record to survive. People are remembered forever for being famous. Thus known by a great number of people, and thus remembered. A president of the United States is a figure who's records will last a great length of time.
Next, the things you write about or create should be interesting, and stay with the times. I look at my family. I have my father, and two grandfathers. One grandfather wrote a biography, and probably not a decade too soon. The other, and my dad, nothing. They are people who don't seem to take great stock in recording their thoughts. And once they are gone, there will not be much of a physical record left of them.
Next is staying with the times. How easy is it to read a Popular Mechanics magazine from the 1930's? Lots of it is boring, out of date text. Some creations hold up, such as classic plays. Even these are stuck in a language barrier, and without modern people being interested in them, they would not survive. People evolve, technology evolves, and it's easy for things to slip between the cracks. The way I'm writing this was not even invented when my father was born.
One way to attempt to live on after death is to raise a family. Having children to remember you by, and being able to tell their children, and so on. But that doesn't last. The sands of time erode those memories in a few hundred years. My mom can tell me stories about my great grandparents, but when she is gone, the tales will fade. I myself know almost nothing about my great great grandparents. I don't even have recorded names of them all.
I graduated with a small class. I believe I was 1 of about 70 students who graduated. Now nine years later, two of them have died. Both due to being involved in an accident. I don't know of anyone else who died, but I don't keep tabs on all 68 of the others. I do know that a majority of them are fine and healthy.
I myself wish to have my entire photo collection and anything I have created or written placed in a way that people can learn about my life forever. And sure, that seems like a "cool" idea, but it's not without flaw. Only a small subset of people look at what I produce now, can you imagine how many will even care when I'm gone? Death will claim each and every one of us, that of all things, is for sure.