What happens? Thinking about it, it occurs to me that we have the option of answering that question whenever we want to. What are the possibilities: (1) nothing, you cease to exist; (2) you continue as some kind of energy (without consciousness) either ceaselessly or until you inhabit another animate thing (without memory); (3) you continue as yourself on another plane of being (heaven, hell, purgatory type stuff)?
If it’s 1, 2, or 1/3 of 3 is there a reason to continue living? What you leave behind is not directly relevant in a 1 or 2 scenario (unless there is some kind of karma in #2 that knocks you down the chain of being – although you wouldn’t know it).
Or maybe the question is better framed as: if it’s 1, 2, or 1/3 of 3 then there is absolutely no reason to fear death.
Watch the movie “Defending Your Life” with Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep. In addition to being pretty funny, it presents the idea that after you die you go to a kind of holding station where you have to demonstrate that you overcame fear in your life and are therefore ready to move on to the next plain of existence, which is more intellectually and emotionally rewarding.
(1) nothing, you cease to exist; (2) you continue as some kind of energy (without consciousness) either ceaselessly or until you inhabit another animate thing (without memory);
These seem like the same thing to me, at least the way you describe it. Your body will be returned to the ground and the nutrients from your body (Energy) will be consumed by something.
This is scientifically accurate (“if you believe in science,” which we now have to say in the USA). 1 makes no sense or else when we die we would simply disappear (which would be admittedly pretty neat).
1 would be akin to your description of everything that composes “you” turning into worm food. So 1 vs 2 really is about whether or not you have a soul/spirit energy body.
Anyway, I think the most comforting (at least) scientific thing I’ve heard about death is that time is just a dimension, even if we can only perceive the passage of time in one direction. However, all moments of time still exist, and are perhaps even accessible to some extra dimensional being. So, you don’t really expire at any point; your moments you experience just exist.