I think the idea is when you're on your death bed to say you did a lot of different, interesting things, not just that you have a more expensive lining in your coffin.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
And, in a funny way, each death is different and you mourn each death differently and each death brings back the death you mourned earlier and you get into a bit of a pile-up.
That's a very scary thing to think about, being trapped in a coffin.
It's an incredible con job when you think about it, to believe something now in exchange for something after death. Even corporations with their reward systems don't try to make it posthumous.
I always knew my death would be a possible consequence of the work I do. But for me it was a price I was willing to pay because this is what I believed in.
I think we could jam a bit more in our coffins than we do. I'm going to have some books, some I haven't finished or haven't read, some feathers and nice bits and pieces, the odd note. Just on the journey for the next bit.
Some people, when they die, leave so much life behind that we wonder how they did it.
I'm more interested in the meaning of funerals and the mourning that people do. It's not a retail experience. It's an existential one.
Maybe if I'd had more direct contact with death, I wouldn't find it so fascinating and I wouldn't write about it so much.
Near-death experiences give you balance. You become more worldly. Your ideas become bigger.
Sometimes it feels as if everything in life is just something we haul into the grave.