You want a physicist to speak at
your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the
conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died.
You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of
thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is
destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration,
every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child
remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping
father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
And at one point you’d hope that the
physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse
there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your
face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the
touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like
children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the
arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons
that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her
eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of
electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.
And the physicist will remind the
congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a
few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them
that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of
all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.
And you’ll want the physicist to
explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they
should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists
have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate,
verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will
examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that
they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law
of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less
orderly. Amen.
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Aaron Freeman, “You Want a
Physicist to Speak at Your Funeral”
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