It must be nice to be an atheist
Today has been a difficult day. If my grandmother were alive, it would have been her 80th birthday. I would rather not have dwelt on this fact, but other members of my family made it difficult to avoid. I don’t know… she died at 72 and I can’t honestly imagine how she’d be if she were 80. Would she have even wanted to live to 80? I’m not sure, the last two years of her life after the death of my grandfather can hardly have been uplifting. She wasn’t healthy enough to live to 80 anyway, she did well to make it as far as 72. Those last few years really showed me what a dreadful thing smoking can be.
I feel profoundly sorry for my little cousin that he will never have grandparents. I was lucky that I got to spend a lot of time with Gran those last few years. Whenever I had study leave for exams, I used to go round to hers and do her shopping rather than do revision. We used to sit and watch morning tv for hours on end. Jerry Springer was a particular favourite of hers, and of mine actually, because my mother wouldn’t allow me to watch it. She thought it was crude 
Do I hope there’s a life after death? No, not really. Some people have faith and find the idea that death is not the end a great comfort, but no matter how much faith I have had, I have always found the idea rather disturbing. For a start, I find no appeal in the idea that my dead relatives can spy on my sex life. But more profoundly, the idea of eternity has oppressed me since I was a small child. I find it terrible to entertain the idea that I might never get a break from being me… Yes, it must be nice to be an atheist.
Tags: after life, death
July 5th, 2008 at 9:51 am
I find it somewhat selfish of people to have their own kids so late in life that it means that their offspring will be born so late that they won’t get much time with the grandparents.
My nan and grandad had one of my uncles when she was, erm, 41 and he 45. When they died, my uncle’s kids were all aged under seven. It doesn’t seem fair, and the seeds were sown by the choice to have their father at so advanced an age that they would be a mere few years from death by the time he had his own kids.
It won’t be so much if we’re wrong and you guys are right though
July 5th, 2008 at 10:59 am
Yeah, I guess people don’t do it deliberately but it is a real shame for the kids who end up without grandparents. My grandparents had my aunt when they were about 41, so there were 16 years between her and my mother. I don’t think that was by design, it was more of a surprise. My aunt had my cousin when she was 34 which is fairly old to have a child but not what I’d class as *too* old. To be fair, she had been married and trying for over 10 years. So my grandparents would only have been about 75 when he was born, but they were both smokers and died by the ages of 70 and 72. My cousin is particularly unlucky because on his father’s side, his grandmother is still alive but in the advanced stages of Alzheimers
If the God I’ve believed in exists, He won’t be too bothered about who’s believed what. As the quote at the bottom of my Yahoo mail spasmodically says “Wer glaubt, Christ zu sein, weil er die Kirche besucht, irrt sich. Man wird ja auch kein Auto, wenn er in einer Garage steht” (He who believes he’s a Christian because he goes to Church is kidding himself. It’s not as if you become a car by standing in a garage”.
July 5th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
You know what? I’ve never translated that before, yet could’ve
Wer glaubt = He who believes
Christ zu sein = Christ to be (actually, I wouldn’t have gotten ‘to be a Christian’ from that)
weil er die Kirche besucht = because he the church ‘besuchen’
irrt sich = mistakes himself (I’m thinking that ‘irren’ looks like ‘error, to err’)
Man wird ja auch kein Auto = After all, one becomes no car
wenn er in einer Garage steht = If one stands in a garage
I genuinely knew ’stehen’ too from ‘verstehen’
July 5th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Sorry, I mistyped in a hurry
It should be “ein Christ zu sein”, which probably makes it clearer 
But yeah, “Christ” is Christian in the nominative at least, whereas Jesus is “Christus”
besuchen is to visit, eg. meine Tante besuchen is to visit my aunt. But it also means to attend something, like school, a class, church.
My translation is rather loose and sich irren is best translated indeed as to err, to be mistaken.
It’s a nice quote anyway, I like it