The afterlife is a waste of time

I was fed the angels and clouds and pearly white gates. The heaven or hell, hot or cold, good or bad. “If you do good things now, you’ll be better off later.” People will still miss you. You will still be cold in the ground or scattered in a destination of your choice.

The afterlife sounds a little boring. A tad predictable. Is my forever the same as yours? But your kitchen smells like coffee, and my bathroom is haunted. Aren’t we a little different to share eternity?

Is the afterlife better than what’s in front of me? I fear my head would explode if that were true.

How does heaven compare to getting frozen yoghurt with my dad?

How does it compare to a song that takes you back to the plane you came home on? How does it compare to the look on her face when you tell her an embarrassing story from your childhood? How does this ‘afterlife’ look when pitted against a quiet night and a block of top deck?

A new spark with an old friend?

Will my dead heroes be waiting for me with open arms? The friends I didn’t get to say goodbye to? I can see why I’d want to buy into it all, can see why I wouldn’t look around for the perks of living.

Why would I plan my funeral when my birthday is around the corner? Ultimately, I like it here too much to waste time thinking about what’s next.

I sat down with the Angel of Death and here’s how that went.

Patrick Marrinan

We locked down an interview with the Angel of death in early march 2023. Catalyst’s upcoming issue about After-life seemed like perfect timing and to our delight (and to everyone else’s misery) Death was in Melbourne. We met for a 40 minute interview at The Carlton Wine Room in Carlton on the first of March.

Thanks for taking the trouble to meet with me Death.

Yeah I was actually already in town but this is fun, thanks for taking an interest. People often try to avoid me more than anything.

What brings you to melbourne?

Visiting family.

Are they originally from melbourne?

no no I was just visiting families. Oh I see!

Yeah a few people died sort of in a row and I was like yeah we’ll do those ones this week.

Could you explain something for our readers, you can’t be everywhere at once, and yet you told us you visited people to…

Give them the touch of death…

Yes. But people die every second all over the world. Do you visit every single person?

I’m not Santa Clause, *laughs*

Death, since you’re here, in lovely Carlton. How does it work?

Okay basically, thanks for asking this by the way, hopefully this won’t come up again. So, you know how a quality assurance officer works. The Officer comes down to the factory once a month to make sure all the orders are going out correctly and there’s no errors or outliers, right. Does the product still get delivered even when the Quality Assurance officer isn’t there? The answer is yes. For every 5,000 products, around 50 of them were quality checked by the officer.

If I just stayed in bed every day for the rest of eternity, deaths would still happen, people would pass on to the great beyond whether I’m there or not, but it’s important for me to visit roughly 10 people a week and personally deliver them as to make sure the symbol of death is understood and that people are getting to their location properly. ance.

Do you pick who to visit?

I just pick from the bowl at random.

Have you ever intentionally visited meet them?

*laughs* Unfortunately I did, I delivered properly. I’m quality assurrandom. a celebrity in order to delivered David Bowie when he passed. It was so special to meet him but I do regret it. I never pick and choose and it’s not proper to take advantage of my position. I saw the Lazarus music video from the Black Star album and I remember thinking “I have to deliver him, this is a once in a lifetime chance.” It didn’t make a difference in the grand scheme but it meant a lot to me, I won’t be doing that again.

What other Bowie albums do you like?

The Man Who Sold the World is a killer album. I really liked that one. The Width of a Circle is 8 minutes long man! 4 minutes in, you start to feel like where is Bowie going with this and then it just… your readers need to listen to that whole album if they haven’t. Width of a Circle is an amazing opener to a kickass album. I was also really impressed with the Black Star album, it might be to do with the timing of his death and what was going on with him at the time and his legacy but Black star really was great and has aged well.. I also really liked the music video for Lazarus.

Will I see you when I die? No.

Will any of our readers?

The safest and most honest answer is no. Unless you’re David Bowie. *laughs*

How long will you be doing this job?

This is an eternity deal, but it’s not difficult so I’m not unhappy about it. I have a great time just watching tv shows.

What’s your favorite show? Probably GoggleBox.

Do you have co-workers?

I once had a boss but he’s passed away.

I see

I shook his hand *laughs*

Death that’s all we have time for, you are a very pleasant person it’s been a pleasure.

Absolutely, this was fun, sorry I didn’t have time for more, if you do another issue I can probably do something on Zoom? But we’ll see.

See you soon Death, thanks again.