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EDIT: FOR FUTURE REFERENCE:
Thanatophilic here means an obsession with death (some equate the word with necrophilia, but that's not the definition I'm using).
The song is The Rememberance Ballad from Atreyu's The Curse album.
Live. Love. Burn. Die. is from Lip Gloss and Black off of Atreyu's Suicide Notes and Butterfly Kisses album.
A man sits alone in an empty valley under an autumn sky. He leans his back against the trunk of an old willow tree; forever bent, forever weeping. He bows his head and contemplates one question: What happens after death? Logic would tell him that nothing would happen - when the brain dies, so does the mind and the ability to think. A song lyric comes to mind:
These days are closing in.
The end has become apparent.
We’re only here for so long.
Will anyone remember my name
When time has washed away
The dust…of my ashes?
When my head rests in a velvet lined casket?
What’s out there?
What is my eternal fate?
It only just recently hit me
That this life…is just a state.
Mortality fading,
Like the innocence of love,
I’m scared to death
Of what’s to become
Of my immortal soul
Of this eternal flame, will you remember?
Will your heart sing with pain?
Who calls out my name?
Who can tell me what happens,
When my eyes close for the last time?
Does it all simply end, in a blanket of darkness?
What of my soul, what of my soul?
He shakes his head. The thought of an empty blackness – nothingness – after his death scares him more than anything else ever has. He shakes; an emphatic assertment that he knows nothing. In this instance, no one does. Everyone is left to ponder what will become of their life after death, if such a thing exists. To honestly have to wonder if their life has more meaning than just the time spent on earth, is excruciating – a pain otherwise unknown. The loss of a dear relative, a wife or husband, when one has no belief in a post-mortem existence is equally as depressing as the loss of their own life.
Time passes by yet still he sits, forever pondering. Nothing he does can take his mind from that thought. What if…? One day he lifts his head and realizes that he has spent his entire life under the weeping tree. His once thick brown hair is now faded and thin. His youthful spirit is now sullen and tired. His eyes wander around the field; the dying trees shed their last leaves as the pre-winter winds burst through the desolate valley.
He realizes that after a lifetime of wondering, he knows no more than he did when he first sat down. He has wasted his life on the question that he still has no answer for. This hurts him more than any other wound ever could. He isn’t even surprised when the black cloaked wraith reaches out his skeletal hand to lead him along the path to darkness.
He stands and declares, “If I die, there are people who will be hurt. They will cry and they will mourn my passing. These are my friends and family. These are the last people I want to hurt.
If i die, there will be others who will be glad that I am gone. They will laugh and smile at the thought of my passing. These are my enemies and I hate them. Why would I want to do anything that would bring them even the slightest bit of joy?”
The Reaper replies, “The point of life is not death; but, to live it to its fullest. Wasting your entire life underneath a tree pondering death leads only to just that – death.”
The old man takes the Reaper by the hand, the icy cold bones wrapping together with the flesh of the man. They walk hand in hand as the last faded leaves flutter to the ground like a fallen angel’s feather in the autumn wind. Together, they walk into an existence (or lack thereof) but it is not meant for us to know where they have gone, only to know that in the end, we will find out. Until then enjoy life as you can – not as a thanatophilic preoccupation with death, but as an unending adventure. Live. Love. Burn. Die.
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