Dying, Death and the Afterlife

I know I said in my very last post that I was going to post more frequently this year. But I have a good excuse - honest. My grandmother passed away recently, so it's been a very busy and very exhausting time.  It has also caused me to do a lot of thinking. What happens when we die?

Of course, no one really knows what happens when we die. We can feel fairly certain we know, hold belief deeply in our faith. But do we ever really know? Isn't that why so many of us are afraid to die? If we believe in heaven and hell and are fairly certain our soul is bound for heaven, then why are we afraid of death? Because we don't know for sure.

My mother used to say the truth could be found by taking pieces from all over and putting them together until the puzzle fit for you. It was not blindly believing what you were told without questioning why.

So, after sitting bedside for a couple of deaths, I can only tell you what I have observed and what it says to me.

What is waiting on the other side?

I don't know. But near death many people believe they can see others on 'the other side' waiting for them. My mother said, many days before she passed, that she could see her father at the end of her bed. And he was not alone. Many other relatives and loved ones who had passed before her were also standing nearby, waiting. She claimed she could see her favorite horse, Alabama, who had died a few years before. I found this part strange until, hours later, both my Godmother and I, sitting in the garage, heard hooves clopping around outside the door, when there were no animals nearby.
Likewise, my grandmother, on her deathbed, would often seem to be watching people around her that no one else could see.
Perhaps the mind manifests these images, our minds playing tricks on us in our last hours in order to comfort us as we ease out of life into whatever comes next. But perhaps those people are real. We have all heard of angels and reapers coming for the dead, but does heaven let out your dead relatives to come and greet you into the afterlife?
Do ghosts exist? So many people throughout all of human existence have seen and heard - even touched - unexplained phenomena. If there is no heaven or hell, where does your soul go? Are you reincarnated? Do you become one with the elements, your energy existing in all that is around you? Is that why people can feel their loved ones in certain objects and locations?

Where does your soul go?
Okay, so I make no secret that I am not a religious person, but neither do I consider myself truly atheist. I just have too many questions to be able to say "I know what I say is true."
I admit that I have a hard time believing in things such as heaven and hell and that when you die you end up in one or the other. How bad do you have to be to go to hell? Isn't that what happens if we sin too much? If that's the case, I would think heaven would be a pretty lonely place and that most of us will spend eternity burning it up down under.
But I also don't necessarily subscribe to the atheist belief that when you die, that's it. There is no more. You're just gone.
We are made up of energy. We consume energy, we burn energy. Energy never disappears, it is only converted into something else. So, our energy has to go somewhere when we die, which leads me back to what I was saying above. Does our energy, our soul, manifest as spirits? Does it disburse into everything around us? Or does it travel to some invisible place held for those who have gone? But if that is the case, wouldn't there be less humans as souls travel to heaven? Instead, there are more of us now than ever before. Perhaps the energy has been reincarnated?
We knew my grandmother's time was near by the change in her breathing. It was the same when my mother had passed a dozen years before. Gradually the breathing got shallower and shallower, and as the breaths weakened, they quickened. Eventually they stop for periods, before a longer gasp takes hold. This can go on for minutes or hours. But eventually that last breath is taken, the pupils dilate, and the body stills. It is a tangible feeling when the life drains from a body. You can sense when they are no longer "there." In my mother's case, she was surrounded by loved ones; my sister and Godmother sat at her head. When she took her last breath, they felt a whoosh of air move past them, out the top of her skull. What was this whoosh if it wasn't that energy leaving her body? And, where did the energy go?

Moments of clarity
People who have been lost for days, or even years, seem to have moments of clarity towards the end. Why? Where did they go during their lost time and how is it that they could find their way back for those last important talks?
My grandmother had Alzheimer's. She hadn't been my grandmother in many years. For at least the last 4 years she didn't know who anyone was and she couldn't communicate. She'd say words that didn't make sense, but she seemed to think she was having a conversation. Sometimes you'd sense that she recognised a name, but didn't know why she should, and you wondered if she was in there somewhere, fighting for a way out.
On the last day of my grandmother's life, she seemed to come back a little bit. She was very weak, but in some ways more responsive than I had seen her in a long time. We told her of some family members who were still on their way, flying in from far away. She heard us speak their names and she would turn to look, waiting for them to arrive. I was able to ask her questions and she would squeeze my hand to answer things that she hadn't in a long time. I talked to her about my daughter - her great-granddaughter - and her eyes lit up. She focused her fading eyes on the picture I held up. She watched the picture and really saw the face in it. I could see the pride in her eyes as she looked at her great-grandchild - a far cry from the glossy-blank look of someone whose mind was gone. I am convinced that in those moments, she remembered the little baby she held in her arms and showed off to anyone who would listen, before she became ill. Later on, she looked at me and said my name without prompt, meaning she recognised and remembered me - something she has been unable to do with anyone for years. She reacted similarly when my uncle arrived from the airport, just two hours before she passed.
My mom was the same. That saying I wrote about at the beginning of this post was something she told me just a day or so before she died. She seemed to be able to analyse life on the whole and see it from the outside. Perhaps this is what you do when the end is near, but for those left behind - listen to those loved ones in those final moments. They will likely, whether inadvertently or on purpose, give you some of the best advice you will ever hear.

Dreams and visions
Are they real? Everyone knows someone who claims to have seen a ghost or in some way have spoken with a loved on in the afterlife. Can this happen? Or is it all hogwash? I can tell you that shortly after my mother died I had a dream of her and we talked. To this day it was probably the most vividly real dream I've ever had. I can still feel the emotions of that conversation deep inside. Was that my own mind creating the dream, perhaps something I needed at that point in my healing? Or did my mother visit me from the afterlife?
Years ago my mother was woken during the night because she felt as though someone was in the house. She went downstairs and looked around and although she found nothing, she couldn't shake the feeling that someone was there. The next morning she received a call from her sister, who lived in another city, saying she'd sat up for hours the night before having a cup of tea and chatting with their dad. My grandfather had died nearly 20 years earlier.

For as long as there have been humans, there have been beliefs about the afterlife. Every culture around the world has traditions based on what they believe happens after we die. Most people fear death, yet, as it becomes imminent, often that fear fades. Why? Do they become aware of something that we aren't? My grandmother refused to sleep the day before she died. I think she was afraid that she wouldn't wake up again. Both she and my mother wanted someone near at all time, afraid to be alone. But as the time grew nearer, they both became peaceful and acceptant of what was to come.

For a week the weather had been rainy and miserable. I can remember sitting at the picnic table with my godmother, watching as the hearse pulled out of the driveway after collecting my mother. Literally as the hearse turned out of the driveway and onto the road, the clouds parted like a flock of birds separating in two and soaring away in opposite directions. The sun came out, and within moments there were virtually no clouds in the sky. The day of her funeral was the warmest in a month - well over 20 degrees on a late October day. The sun was shining and rusty orange leaves littered our path, reminding us that just like the seasons, life changes. We celebrated her life that day, rather than mourned it.

Do these signs mean anything? Was my mother able to somehow influence the weather, sending us a sign that everything would be okay? Or was it just coincidence, and we found meaning in it that suited our needs at the time? Does it really matter? I think whatever helps you cope with the loss is right to believe, because it is what keeps you strong and moving forward, knowing that all will be fine in the end.