FOR LUA

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral, Lua. 

You want the physicist to talk to your family about the conservation of energy, so they
will understand that your energy has not died. 

You want the physicist to remind your mother about the first law of thermodynamics:
that no energy is created in the universe and none is destroyed.  You want your father to
know that all of your energy, every vibration, every BTU of heat, every wave and every
particle of his beloved child remains with him in this world. 

You want the physicist to tell your mother and your father that amid the energy of the
cosmos, you gave as good as you got. 

To your sisters, brothers, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins you want the physicist
to explain that every photon that ever caromed from you into their eyes created in their
beings constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on
forever…And to let every friend present know 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 that have raced off you like children -- have
had their waves forever changed by you. 

In the closeness of the congregation, the physicist may remind everyone how much of
our energy is given off as heat, and tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in
life is still here as part of all that we are, even as we continue in the heat of our own
lives. 

And you will want the physicist to explain to those who loved you, those of faith and
the skeptics too, that scientists have precisely measured the conservation of energy and
have found it consistent across space and time, so that all who mourn you may take
comfort in knowing that your energy is still around.

Because according to the law of the conservation of energy not a bit of you is gone –
you’re just less orderly.

___________________________________________________________________________

Adapted from “Having a Physicist Speak at Your Funeral,” by Aaron Freeman

Jim Zien ~ May 6, 2006 ~ For Lua Ameden