Thought for tonight on a melancholy evening

Thought for tonight on a melancholy evening, sponsored by Laphroaig cask strength single malt and brought to you from under the warmth of a heated faux fur throw in a house in Falkirk ...How lucky we are to be alive, given that the vast majority of people who could be thrown up by the combination lottery of DNA will in fact never be born. Try imagining the relative brevity of life by imagining a laser-thin spotlight creeping along a gigantic ruler (the old wooden type we had at school) of time. Everything before or after that spotlight is shrouded in the darkness of the dead past, or the darkness of the unknown future. We are staggeringly lucky to find ourself in the spotlight however brief our time is under the sun. If we waste a second of it, or complain it is dull or like a child say it is boring then this is a callous insult to those unborn trillions who will never even be offered life in the first place. Mark Twain once famously wrote.."I do not fear death, I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and I had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it" His words are very true, being dead will be no different from being unborn, I will just be as I was during the time of Willian Wallace, the dinosaurs or the trilobites. I believe I will rot and nothing of my ego will remain, I am 43, I love life, I love my son, I love the natural wonderment of looking outside my window onto my garden when the sun is shinning or listening to the rain pattering against my window when I try to sleep. But should I shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation? Oh yes, I fear the pain and unpleasantness depending on the luck of my departure, I fear forgetting the names of the ones I love and have loved as I have seem from visiting my mother who suffers from dementia, the same woman who I would run to as a child when I fell grazing my knee knowing that the only cure to offset my tears would be her kiss to make it better. The smell of my baby Sam and the sight of his eyes filling with tears when crying and the excitement on his little face on Christmas morning when he walked in to see Santa had left him his desired tinytykes climbing car. I remember being in love, the spring in my step, that walking on clouds feeling and how every sight seen seemed to continue into infinity and how inspired I would write words for my muse, I remember heartbreak, how hollow my heart felt and how I struggled for breath. I remember my Dad, his big callused hands which would pick me up and throw me onto his shoulders, the smell of old spice aftershave on his neck and the little pieces of news print on his chin were he cut himself shaving. I remember my older brother, how he use to pick me up upon returning from his work wearing blue overalls and the view of the curls on top of his head as he hurled me around the room up light like a aeroplane to my shrieks of joy...such memories now in the past and never to be repeated. On some aspects it sucks being born Homo sapien (ignore this statement if you live in Switzerland or the Netherlands or some other enlightened place not cursed by the influence of religion) I see death as terminal not transitional, if you believe you have but once life you tend to appreciate it more and not require any moral compass to know how to lead your "midgie fart existence in the grand scale of things" to its fullest.