15. Life after Death
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” I Corinthians 13:12
After a period of hospitalization, Grandma died from complications resulting from a broken hip. She was eighty-six. I was twenty-three, and though I had been close to my grandmother during childhood, I wasn't shocked or traumatized when she died. My attention was occupied by the youngest member of the family, my four-year old daughter, Ell.*.
A day or so before she died, my grandmother opened her eyes, and in a clear voice filled with the sound of amazement, wonder and satisfaction she said, “the veil.” Her eyes were brighter and more alert than they had been in months, but it seemed as if they were focused on some point in mid-air – or maybe in some other dimension. Mum and I looked at each other, and clasped hands, for we both knew what “the veil” meant to Grandma. She used to say that a veil is lifted at death, allowing us to see clearly, all that is concealed during life.
The night before her funeral, I stayed behind to have a few quiet moments, remembering all the wonderful times I'd had with her when I was a child. I was not feeling distraught; my memories were warm and loving, and quite pleasurable considering the circumstances. As I looked down at her without really seeing, lost in a reverie of good times, I suddenly felt her presence behind me and slightly to my right (as if she'd come across the room to stand beside me). And I turned to “her” automatically, as if I fully expected her to be standing there. But of course I did not expect any such thing, and the incongruity of my movement sent a shock wave through me. I had felt her presence there behind me, even though I knew her body was lying in the casket in front of me! It made no sense, and instantly I chided myself for being childish, for permitting any spooky feeling to arise. That, I told myself sternly, was blaspheming her memory; but the feeling had been uncanny not spooky, and my expectation and movement, so completely automatic, that I was unnerved. Still, I remained there, wanting to analyze and to understand that suddenly energized sensation, before leaving my grandmother’s presence. Nature however, did not seem keen on cooperating with me. A sudden, resounding crack of thunder followed on the heels of a lightning flash that sent shadows staggering around the room.
More lighting. More crashing thunder. The storm had come alive to rant and rave and rattle my nerves as I tried to say quiet good-byes to my grandmother. I wanted to flee from the irrational fear that had so abruptly intruded on my introspection, for it seemed that every horror story archetype of corpses, creepy mortuaries and stormy nights might be activated at once and scare me to death as I stood there.
“Ok. Hold on here!” I thought with a flare of defiance. “This is Grandma. That is a thunderstorm. Get a grip.” With perception under control, I silently apologized to the spirit of my grandmother then joined my family where they waited in the lobby. Outside the parlour, less haunted feelings returned, and it was easy to dismiss the experience, as state-of-mind, nothing more or less than a natural result of the circumstances.
The weather on the day of the funeral continued to add to the otherworldly event. All morning, dark bruised clouds had gathered to threaten rain, but abruptly, as we emerged from the funeral cars at the cemetery, the sun broke through. I could hardly believe it. It seemed so perfect, so incredibly, unbelievably perfect. Grandma used to say that if there was a patch of blue in the sky, “big enough to make a pair of man's ‘britches’” (breeches or pants) then the sky would clear. But there was no patch of blue, just an unseen break in the clouds that had let a few sunrays shine down on us, while we laid her body to rest. As we got back into the cars, the sun vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. And by the time we reached the cemetery gates, the whole sky had let loose. Rain threw itself to the ground as the lightning-streaked atmosphere was shattered by thunder. As my mother said through her tears, it surely seemed as if Nature too was mourning her mother's passing from the Earth.
Grandma Makes an Appearance
As we sat around the kitchen table at my mother’s home later that night, sipping tea and talking tearfully, the August storm picked up again. Great peals of thunder, and strobe lightning accompanied the rain that thrashed the windows. But it held no further fear and the thunder faded away as the storm moved east.
That night an ordinary, forgettable dream shifted, and became an extraordinarily memorable one. In the dream, as I came out of the bedroom, my attention was drawn towards the hall—to my grandmother who was coming up the stairs. When she saw me, she stopped, halfway between the landing and the top step.
“I'm fine!” She said. “It's won-derful!”
Even at the age of eighty-six years, Grandma had been almost entirely free of facial wrinkles. But in the dream, her face was even more youthful and energized. There was no doubt in my mind that this dream was set in the present, and that she was referring to wherever she was now. She seemed to emanate light, and appeared radiantly happy and tenderly understanding, as if she knew that I knew that I could never be one hundred per cent certain of the nature of this dream. Though it had always seemed obvious to me that dream information is the product of the dreamer's thoughts and experiences, when I awoke, I felt as if I had just received an indication of an afterlife, before I'd even had time to wonder.
Why had I dreamed this?
For the first time, I considered the possibility that some dreams might be more than simply a dreamer-driven production. Was it conceivable that under certain circumstances some subtle portal could open between one dimension and another, and be displayed in dream form? Or was it that some knowledge inside me had been awakened, and was prodding me with dream, to be considered here in the conscious world?
I might have decided upon the meaning of the dream if I had seen it as an opportunity to dull my mother’s pain – but I did not think that telling her about it would help. To the contrary, I thought she might feel even sadder for not having a similar dream of her dear mother. I knew I couldn’t convey the luminous quality of the dream, and I certainly didn’t want to sound as if I thought that my Grandmother had “spoken” to me “from the grave”. That just sounded too weird! And it hadn’t been the feeling at all.
I had never really given much thought to death because I hadn’t had much experience with it I suppose. I accepted its inevitability, and though I had never stopped wondering what the ultimate purpose of life was, I didn’t think much about what might, or might not exist beyond life. That is what surprised me about the dream. I had not been asking about any afterlife. I had dismissively figured that there was no point in speculating about something that nobody could know. I had no desire to waste my wonderings when there was no possible way of obtaining an answer.
So, why was my curiosity piqued? Why was I wondering?
During the days that followed, I could not help but reflect on the feeling back in the funeral home, of sensing my grandmother’s presence beside me. Where had it come from? Why had it arisen?
- Science is not a substitute for spirituality, any more than analysis is a substitute for poetry.
If it had been my imagination, (or some sort of left-brain stimulation producing a right sided sensation) what had prompted it? I had not been feeling scared or unsettled or anything remotely similar when it happened. (The unsettling spookiness had arisen only in the aftermath of this curious, surprising and strangely heart-warming sensation, when I had allowed Hollywood images of death to impinge on my conscious thoughts – helped along, no doubt by the highly apropos sound effects of the thunderstorm.) Before the storm, I’d been feeling quite peaceful.
And that very stillness stood as a smooth, neutral background into which my sense of Grandma's presence had briefly and silently crackled. Or at least that had been the feeling. What was it? Why had it occurred? How was such a perception even possible? And what about the subsequent dream? If this was simply my own imagination at work, why bother?
I was not sure what I thought about Organized Religion. I was disillusioned, but I made sure that my daughter attended Sunday school, just as my own mother had done, two decades earlier. Now I was of two minds about the subject. When I looked at nature, I could grasp a sense of God, but in a way that was focused more on the universe itself, than the ideas of humankind. And although I saw the common sense in most of the rules in the Bible, I had come to think of “God-the-Father” as a mythical figure that ancient people had creatively imagined, and modern people were superstitious about, a sanctified character that could deliver the laws of life, with ultimate authority. All “Religions” seemed to personify (what I thought was meant by) “God”, to describe God as a male and as human-like, and I could not accept such a narrow belief. I felt strongly that this idea of God as a human speaking male was the very least that God was and a rather one-dimensional representation of the true all-encompassing nature of God. While I did not feel any need or desire to believe in what I thought was a traditional fiction, I wasn't going to deny my daughter the opportunity to believe, or at least to gain some knowledge about a subject that had guided, inspired, and confounded humankind for as long as we have existed.
I also wanted her to know that many rules in life, were time-honoured and shared (if not uniformly practiced), and were not just arbitrary family whims of “should and shouldn't”. The main purpose of religions, I thought, lay in their ability to provide good guidelines and instructions, which if followed, ultimately allow the most liberated passage through and fullest experience of life.
Although I would not have been able to proclaim convincingly that I “believed” in God-the-Father, I probably would have said that I believed, if I had been asked. It was the best answer. It was not worth scaring the bejeebers out of someone who might be on the verge of disbelief, by trying to explain that I did not believe in God in a “religious” way. What would that mean to anyone else? It was too close to being totally misleading.
As far as I was concerned, if belief in God meant that I also had to embrace the notions of a fiery hell, or of a God that passed judgment, I'd pass. Hell! If I could understand and forgive, then surely an ultimately wise and knowledgeable God would know instantly how (and why) we had come to think, and to behave in a particular way: good, evil, or a mixture of both.
Three months after my grandmother died, I stumbled upon an article written by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, one of the pioneers in the study of death and dying, which led me to Dr. Raymond A. Moody's book, “Life After Life” (first published in 1975). All I could do was shake my head and marvel at the stupendous timing of it all, for it was around this time, that I first heard the Confucian adage: “when the student is ready to learn, the teacher shall appear.” After that, the visible coincidences in my life seemed to click into motion as from idle to first gear.
posted by Winter Child @ 8:30 p.m.
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