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/her 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 him/her know that all the photons that bounced from
you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her/his
eyes, that those photons created within her/him 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.