Understanding Death Leads to Appreciation of Life



The older we get, the closer we are to the moment of death. The certainty of death is one of the few things all human beings have in common, and yet the topic is considered taboo in polite society. We see death in the news every day, but we don’t talk about our own death or the death of our loved ones – at least not until it happens. Even then, we avoid the words “death” or “died” by saying that someone has “passed away.”

            If someone has “passed” it means they have gone from one place to another. To say that someone passed “away” implies that they went out of existence. Many people do believe that they will no longer exist after death. I can understand how they would avoid thinking about their non-existence as long as there are other things to think about. Other reasons to avoid talk of death may be: (1) it’s considered to be a morbid subject, (2) we don’t want to make others feel uncomfortable, and (3) there is too much disagreement about what happens to us after we die. 

If you’re old enough to be reading the Senior Scene you know that you have to prepare for your death, if you haven’t already. Do you have a will? A power of attorney? An advance directive? There are a lot of things we can do to make life easier for our loved ones after we leave this world. Besides putting things in order for those we’ll leave behind, we can contemplate what will happen to us after we have “passed” from this life to the Great Beyond.

As far as I’m concerned, the worst part of death is the process of getting there.  Like everyone else, I hope to die peacefully in my sleep. I’m not worried about what will happen after that. Ever since I was a child I have thought of the afterlife as the next Great Adventure. And the older I get, the deeper is my understanding that the scope of this adventure is far beyond anything I can imagine with my mortal brain.

Some people reading this column are skeptics who believe they will cease to exist after death. I will not try to convince them otherwise. Some believe that non-Christians are destined for Hell. I’m not trying to change their minds. It is common to say “RIP” when someone dies, as if we have nothing but eternal rest to look forward to. A little rest might be nice, but after a few hundred years or so I’ll be ready for my adventure. I’m kidding about the few hundred years, of course. I will be bored after a few days – that is, if days even feel like days in the eternal now of the Great Beyond.

I have found evidence for the afterlife in the numerous reports of near-death experiences I have read or heard about. Twenty-five years ago, Mark and I went to a SUNY Oneonta presentation by a man named Tom Sawyer who was clinically dead for 15 minutes before being revived. Prior to this experience he was a self-centered, skeptical agnostic. His encounter with the unconditional love of Christ, and his life review, transformed him. The life review, which is described by other survivors of an NDE, is the experience of timelessly re-living one’s entire life and seeing the consequences of every decision. People who relate this experience say that there was no judgement from the Being of Light who showed them their life. The life review guide is sometimes referred to as Christ, and sometimes as a Being of Light. Either way, this spirit offers nothing but unconditional love while the viewer gleans the lessons to be learned from their physical existence.

After hearing many stories from people who had near-death experiences, and from those who communicate with loved ones on the Other Side, I have come to the conclusion that no two afterlife experiences are exactly alike; just as no two earthly lives are alike. One book that stands out from the others because it presents such an expansive and eye-opening picture of eternity is The Afterlife of Billy Fingers: How My Bad-Boy Brother Proved to Me There’s Life After Death by Annie Kagan. Not only does Billy prove to his sister that life is eternal, he shows her that it is more wonderful than anything we can conceive of. His last request is that Annie share his story so that more people will gain insight into the meaning of life and death. With a deeper understanding of death comes peace of mind and a greater appreciation of life. Really.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Honoring Veterans with Prayers for Peace

Image
                       It is Veteran’s Day weekend, a time when we honor all of our veterans of war, both dead and living. I honor my father, who thankfully did not have to fight in World War II, but served as a private in ordnance; m y late father-in-law, who flew with the navy during World War II, my uncle who flew a fighter jet in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, a cousin and brother-in-law, who still suffer the after effects of the Vietnam War, and many others. I honor them for their sacrifices and I pray for the day when we no longer create veterans. I was born eight years after World War II ended, and just after the end of the Korean War. As I grew up, these wars were a part of the dim past that made up the history of the world before I came into it. For the first ten years of my life I maintained the naïve belief that all wars were history; that people had learned to resolve their differences without violence and warfare. I couldn’t imagine that I had been born into
Read more

Strangers in a Strange Land

Image
Downtown Delavan - a short walk from my house.        It's been nearly six months since Mark and I moved from our longtime home in Oneonta, New York, to Delavan, Wisconsin. After living in New York for 32 years, and never expecting to move away, it was quite a shock to find ourselves in this conservative, midwestern town where we didn't know a soul. The last time I walked downtown in Oneonta I met five people that I knew. After five months in Delavan I started to recognize a familiar face in Piggly Wiggly once in awhile, but nobody on the main street. After all, there is no coffee shop here, no bookstore, no Artisan's Guild, no Yellow Deli or Autumn Cafe. No Silks and Treasures. I do walk downtown to the library and the post office, and Mark and I often walk to a Mexican restaurant. Or we did until the coronavirus took over the planet.         The explanation for our move is in my last post: "Farewell to Oneonta." It was a sudden decision based on our rea
Read more

The Joy of Letterwriting

Image
The other day I came across a magazine article that advised readers to slow the pace of modern life by handwriting a letter – on stationery – and putting some pretty stamps on the envelope. What a novel idea!   And what a way to make us seniors feel old, telling people how to enjoy an old custom that used to be a common practice.  I started writing letters as a child when my grandfather, a post master in Villisca, Iowa, told me that I had to write letters if I wanted to receive them! I wrote to Gramps, and he wrote back, often enclosing plate blocks of pretty new stamps for my collection.  As a high school student in the 1960s I had a dozen pen pals – several in different states, and others in England, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia. We loved filling each other’s mail boxes with the letters we decorated with a variety of stamps, because stamp collecting was part of the fun of receiving mail. Our letters were handwritten, because very few kids knew how to type in those
Read more