The Marks Post: Death is not the end

“He’s not really dead. As long as we remember him.”
That famous quote from Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan is just one example from movies and television of how people cope with death.
I’m watching Picket Fences on Hulu, and many of the episodes deal with issues relating to death from assisted suicides, transplanting a heart from an Alzheimer’s patient into his son, transplanting a pig’s liver into a patient, and even freezing a nine-year-old leukemia patient until there is a cure.
The fact is death is all around us. Just look at the news recently. We lost Betty White, Sidney Poitier, and Bob Saget.
I lost someone close to me last week. My old classmate, Joey Simoneaux, passed away from pancreatic cancer. He and I were best friends growing up.
In fact, Joey is the reason I started going to Doucet’s Barber Shop. Before then, my grandpa always brought me to Arnaud’s. One Saturday, Joey’s mom, Jeannine took us to Doucet’s. Jay sat me in the chair and put a video game in my hand, and I was hooked. I hadn’t gone to another barber shop, and that was about 30 years ago.
Then, in 1995, I had a slumber party for my birthday and invited a couple guys. My dad took us to the movies in Lafayette. Most of the guys went see one thing, my dad went see Apollo 13, but Joey and I went see Batman Forever with Val Kilmer as the Caped Crusader.
Not long after that, Joey and his family moved down to Centerville. That was before social media and even before ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger, so we lost contact. Years later, I saw him at Louisiana Boys State at LSU.
A few months ago, we connected on Facebook but never messaged each other or anything. Looking back, now that he’s gone, I should have checked in and seen how he was doing.
As I said before, though, death is all around us. We cannot mask that reality, and there is no vaccine against death. It will come for all of us. But, death is not the end of the story. As Christians, we believe in an afterlife where there is a Heaven and a Hell.
Joey, I miss you, and I hope to see you again one day. If there is a movie theater in Heaven, save me a seat for a Batman double-feature.