The title of this article was inspired by the 2007 hit song "Dead And Gone" by T.I. (feat. Justin Timberlake).

Last night, as I was reading "Hamlet," I came face to face with the reality of my own death.

Of course, we all know we're going to die someday. But, how many of us really know? I thought I did, until last night when I started pondering what death really means. It’s a cessation of being. Your body deteriorates and shuts down, sure. But what happens to the metaphysical stuff? What happens to me when I die? You may argue that worrying about these questions is pointless since they can be answered only in death, but I think we are all confronted with questions like these at one time or another. And we all handle death differently.

This existential crisis that showed up in the middle of my homework last night was not without precedent, though. Yesterday afternoon, my old yearbook teacher reached out to tell me that a former classmate who had been struggling with brain cancer has only a few days left to live. This news got me thinking about the other deaths I’ve been around to experience. January 2014, in my senior year of high school, my grandfather passed away at the age of 89. Almost exactly a year later, on Jan. 7, 2015, my best friend’s father died of cancer. And now, a girl I shared a class with every day for over a year is not long for this world. Yes, death is a natural part of life, but it comes as a slap in the face when it happens to someone you know, and a punch to the gut when it happens to someone you love. If there’s a right way to deal with it, please, let me know. Because all I can conclusively say from watching friends and family members, and myself, cope is that we all go about it in different ways.

Some folks turn to religion and look to God for answers and as explanation. They hold on to the belief that it was their loved ones' “time to go” and that their spirits now exist peacefully in some Heaven. Some make death entirely about themselves, focusing on it as something that has happened to them and how it has affected their lives. Some joke about it and make it into a “celebration of life,” hosting wakes, probably drinking, and telling stories. Others, like me, are unsure how to feel. My method of dealing with death is to support those who need it and to hope that the deceased has found peace somewhere, be it in a Heaven or in the simple cessation of existence.

But when those bigger questions are asked, I'm paralyzed. What has happened to what made my grandfather my grandfather? His ashes are in a box in his wife’s house, but where is he? Can my best friend’s dad really still sense and see his family, from where his soul hopefully is hanging out in the clouds? I have no idea. Part of my struggle with the concept of death is that I struggle with the concept of Heaven. I think Heaven is a beautiful idea, and I love believing it exists, but I have issues with its logistics. Where is Heaven? How does a soul get there? Is it a place, or more a state of mind or being? If it’s the latter, how can that be, when “mind” and “being” largely stop when our bodies die? If our brains are largely just firing synapses, is what happens inside our heads what makes up a soul? And if so, how does the soul exist after the brain has stopped functioning?

The questions just keep coming and coming and coming, without answer. I’m giving myself a headache just writing them down. When I die, my body will cease functioning and eventually decay, recombining with the earth. This I understand and have come to terms with, but what happens to me? My love for glasses and caffeine, my creativity, my fears, my affections, where does all this go? I choose to trust that it all goes somewhere and that there is some purpose to it all, but when it comes to all the other questions, I certainly don’t have any answers.

This doesn't mean we stop looking for them, though. I think a large part of many people's lives is devoted to them, in fact. Whether you go to church, read everything you can get your hands on, or cherish time with loved ones, I think we're all trying to find the answers to these questions somewhere. And in the meantime, we're trying to create something memorable. We each deal with death in our own ways, in part, I think, because we are all trying to come to terms with our own concepts of it, and with implications those beliefs have for our own eventual exits from the stage of conscious existence.