Jeremiah Tolbert

I went through a phase as a kid when I was obsessed with liv­ing for­ever. Strike that.  I’m still in that phase now, but I was more inven­tive about it before I felt my own mor­tal­ity so keenly. Since my father died, I’ve mostly given up any belief that I will live for­ever, but I still wouldn’t mind it.

Anyway, I dreamed up my own after­life sys­tem, prob­a­bly because I found the Christian notion of Heaven very prob­lem­atic (and either absolutely empty or entirely over­crowded).  In my after­life belief, you were alive again in a meta­phys­i­cal plane of exis­tence after death only for so long as the liv­ing thought about you or some­thing you had made.  The only souls that lit­er­ally live on are the ones that fig­u­ra­tively live on in their work. Of course, the sys­tem is not with­out its flaws.  Some might find the notion of an immor­tal ser­ial killer or even Hitler a bit dis­turb­ing. It ele­vates impact on soci­ety as the high­est achieve­ment in life. Most peo­ple, in this belief, would just slowly fade from mem­ory, and, as those who knew them passed on, depart the after­life into oblivion.

What can I say? Science fic­tion taught me to con­cretize the metaphor.

I sup­pose I’m pur­su­ing remem­brance after I die now through writ­ing.   The web­sites I built prob­a­bly won’t last a few years in their cur­rent forms.  There’s no longevity to that work at all.  I may get lucky with my pho­tog­ra­phy and cap­ture some­thing time­less, but right now, my buy­ers rarely know who I am. 

And even­tu­ally, I’ll pass on some genetic material—that’s a pop­u­lar way of liv­ing on. 

Kids.  I had another really bizarre notion as a child, this time about why peo­ple have kids. It prob­a­bly grew out of hear­ing adults say of the deceased, “She lives on in her sons,” or some such words.  I fig­ured your soul mys­ti­cally down­loaded into your child’s body the moment you died in your own.  I was 11 or 12 when the idea came to me, right  when you have this deep sus­pi­cion that adults are all lying to you about some­thing impor­tant. I couldn’t rec­on­cile what hap­pens to the child’s mind in that sit­u­a­tion though–I thought maybe it lived on sort of mixed up in there.  The other flaw in my bril­liant meta­phys­i­cal con­struct: one has two par­ents, and par­ents can have more than two chil­dren.  It could get pretty crowded inside an only child, or, what, stretched out over 9 kids?

Invasion of the body snatch­ers, super­nat­ural style.  And the invaders are your par­ents!  I was kind of dis­ap­pointed when my dad died and his voice didn’t sud­denly pop into my head and start telling me what we did next.  The things you remem­ber from your child­hood when a par­ent dies are unpredictable.

Lately, I have been schem­ing a bet­ter plan for metaphor­i­cal immor­tal­ity.  I’ve been work­ing on this one all morn­ing, and I have to say, I think it’s my best shot.  The writing’s not going any­where lately.  So here it is, my plan to live on in mem­ory forever:

I’m going to “bury” my “trea­sure” in them there hills.

And no, that’s not sex­ual innu­endo.  We already talked about hav­ing kids a few para­graphs ago.

Step one: Establish the illu­sion that there is a trea­sure in the first place. A few weeks or months before my death (it helps in this sce­nario if I die slowly from some­thing like can­cer), I’ll trans­fer some money into gold coins and leave a few lay­ing around my home for rel­a­tives and friends to notice. I’ll post on future blog­gos­phere and Twitter IV updates denounc­ing our depar­ture from the gold stan­dard, and announce my intent to trans­fer all my assets into high value gold coins. Maybe allude to win­ning the lot­tery or mak­ing a lot of money on the futur­is­tic stock market.

Step two: Take long, soli­tary hikes into the hills car­ry­ing a shovel and a burlap sack.  While on these hikes, I’ll plant my seed money (so to speak).  A few coins here and there–not more than a few hun­dred dol­lars worth, but enough so that when they’re found, word of the Old Man Tolbert’s lost trea­sure will spread in the media.

Step three:  On my death bed, let out my inner impres­sion­ist painter and scrib­ble inscrutable maps.  Dozens of them.  Become agi­tated if any of my dot­ing fam­ily ask what I’m doing and tell them “you’ll never find it!  Not even with one of these!”  Then wink at the one grand­child who’s in on the scheme with me, in return for a hefty inher­i­tance and a promise to reg­u­larly bury a few more gold coins every decade or so. Hmm, I should prob­a­bly put that in a secret will or something.

Step four: the hard part.  The tim­ing here is cru­cial.  My last words.  When I feel death creep­ing in, after hav­ing lived a long full life at the age of 154, I’ll have my many descen­dents and friends draw near.  I’ll apol­o­gize for my sins, and say that my pain has brought me clar­ity in these final moment. “It was wrong of me to deny you my trea­sure.  You… you can it…”, wave a fist­ful of crude maps,  and then die.

I think I can pull it off.  And if not, well, at least I have some­thing to occupy my thoughts as the end draws near.

So what’s your backup plan for liv­ing for­ever if writing/​creativity doesn’t work out?

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Tags: afterlife, fake treasure, fame, immortality, My Writing