Naps and death

Since I retired to work on my small personal photography business and my photography and history projects, I can schedule my own time. I'm all things of my work these days, and while it's not always the best or wisest thing to do, it's what I'm doing, good, bad or indifferent. And this includes taking days off for other things, emergencies, and whatever else life throws in the way, such as putting the van in for service yesterday for a new clutch master cylinder and walking around the area on errands.

The one thing I have really liked is naps in the afternoon, especially after lunch on the days I've done my exercise in the morning and read the newspapers during lunch. Sometimes while lying on the couch the mind wanders into ideas, and it occurred to me, which isn't new by any stretch of the imagination, that death sometimes is a nap you never wake up from. And waking up from a nap reminds me that while I have to wake up and continue with my work and life, death wasn't on the schedule that day.

I read about these people who die in their sleep during the night. A nap is the same thing, except shorter and more conscious, but there always is a moment in the nap where you fall asleep and then wake up, usually for me 15-20 minutes later, but 30-60 minutes on days I'm really tired, often from a bad night's sleep. One moment you're thinking and the next you're thinking but time elapsed in between.

That's the interesting phenomena with naps. Two moments of life and consciousness in between moments of life and sleep. And one day, the second moment won't happen. You won't know or feel it. And that's the strange feeling when I lie down for the nap, I'm betting it's not my time and I'll wake up a little later. Or so I hope.

It often makes we wonder, what if I did die, What would everyone think when they walked into my place and saw where I was in life and work. My unique existence on this earth would cease and everything I was or had done is now history, which it is anyway, but now it's really history as there is no more and no more me to carry one. What would they think?

But then I wake up and roll on. Or so far anyway.