Still surviving

Most part of the tremendous support enjoyed by religion is based on the terrible fear of dead. It's an unequal mix between pure fear and selfishness (of the kind "I want to survive at any expense, now and the illusory, but better than nothing after-life") and it is quite secure to think about a "life", your life precisely, continuing after your physical death.

Humans set-up rituals of remembering the deaths mostly to be constantly assured themselves too, when not alive, will be remembered somehow. It could be psychologically healthy and the concept of social guilt is, in some respect, compulsory for the members of a family to follow the traditions, whatever the religion or their inner beliefs. Shortly, a huge hypocrisy.
Facing the death of people you fully love is terribly painful, but it's nothing you can do about it. It's not about looking to replace to loved one(s), but to try to reorganize your life (this one you are living right now) from a different perspective, being at least happy of having at least the occasion to experience what others are looking for a whole life without necessarily ever finding. You have the taste of an authenticity, maybe impossible to find lately, but still a real life standard, not an imaginary one. This could be terribly painful too.
As an atheist, I took everything as it happened, as facts occurring into my life. Not a single moment felt the need for a prayer, and I don't have/need tombs to put flowers on it, to carefully arrange weekly or to light candles at. A one year Kaddish is nothing and by no way it would alleviate such a loss. But I tried to reorganize the happy memories into a daily life of self-respect, not acceptance of narrow-minded, denial and lies and illusions. I had the chance to know at least one single authentic individual.
Found this morning on richarddawkins.net an interesting account of an Atheist woman who found her own way of living with the grief of loosing the loved one. Without Gods.

Denying the present

“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden”. (…)
Excerpt from T.S. Eliot, “No. 1 of 'Four Quartets'”

I don’t remember exactly when I’ve read this poetry for the first time. I don’t purposely learn verses by heart, since I finished the primary school. But in this case, everything fit automatically into my mind. It sounds so natural, in a way: in fact, both present and past are reorganized and projected permanently into an unknown future, only to diminish this uncertainty. We are present, physically, but in fact we are almost all the time absent. Sometimes, I think we are fully enjoying the present while sleeping, because only then we are out of the normative time. We wake up thinking what we’ll have to do; we finish our day thinking what we’ve done. We start our lives as a plan – of the others, mainly our family; when we grow up we are able ourselves to manage our escape from the present. I haven’t yet fully evaluated the percentage, but mostly we spend our lives in an antechamber: waiting to grow up, to have our “future”, to accomplish our “dreams”, to have a family, to help our children to be themselves, to dye. Some are desperately hoping/believing in an after-life, but as the continuation of the same mechanical waiting lines.