Roddenberry Got It Wrong.

 

I stood alongside my close friend and his Brother three days ago, while they said a last goodbye to their Father, who’d finally succumbed to a protracted battle with esophageal cancer.

I wept for Daniel, the deceased. I wept for my friend Paul, and his Brother Neil, whom I’d only just met. I knew the man in the pine box only a little, having only been in his company two or three times, during the course of my friendship with one of his Sons.

It occurred to me, during the cremation service, as I purposefully tuned out the religious prattle of the eccentric priest, that I should mark this passing with some kind of attempt at meaningful or insightful prose.

I got nothing.

I relieved my own Brother’s death and subsequent burial, back in 2004, along with both my Grandparents’, as I watched helplessly while Paul and Neil sobbed for a Dad they’ll probably never see again – unless…….

Unless we’re more than mere bags of meat roaming this mud ball, hurtling through the galaxy, as we pollute, consume and destroy.

There’s nothing profound about it, dying. It just stinks.

There was only one God in that chapel, while the kindly well-meaning priest chattered and pontificated: Death.

And Death truly doesn’t discriminate, striking down both ‘beggar’ and ‘king’ alike…

Maybe there’s more to the Human Disgrace than flesh and bone. If the soul is elastic and transcends this mortal serpent’s coil, then perhaps we’ll all be reunited – with those stolen from us by disease and tragic mishaps or merely the sin of aging.

Either way – Roddenberry got it wrong. Space isn’t the final frontier…

We’ll all find out, sooner or later.