I attended the funeral of a friend and neighbor today. A retired Naval captain, he wore that dignity well, and I saluted him. Unfortunately, his fifteen-year-old heart bypass suddenly blew out . . . and he was gone.

Watching his small black-draped widow struggling with her tears, one felt her pain and abandonment. Even thought she was surrounded by family, she was utterly alone.

Talking with another neighbor afterwards, I said that Chuck was lucky. As he died suddenly, he didn’t suffer physically or emotionally. For the terminally ill, saying goodbye is excruciating. I said to my neighbor that I hope we’re as lucky as Chuck, to die quickly. My neighbor was very offended, that I was somehow being disrespectful to Chuck.

Existentialists are often dismissed as just another “death-cult” which is simply ignorant. Very few people want to be dead, but some do prefer death over continued pain, whether physical or emotional, whether real or imagined. After all, the dead don’t suffer!

Instead, existentialists focus on “aloneness” – think being alone on an ice floe in a river headed out to sea. We come into the world alone and leave it the same way . . . so what? Maybe, death is not such a big deal, after all? It’s certainly not worth arguing about with your neighbors.