After Life, Afterlife?

A year ago at this time I was in Yuba City being driven around by a man who was dying.  John was an air force buddy.  We had met 60 years earlier while the air force was training us to be navigators.  We had lost touch, but were back together for a few days last spring.

An infection and cancer had killed off most of John’s lungs.  He was on oxygen and could walk only three or four steps at a time before pausing to rest.  He could drive, however, and in his car we went to lunch and then cruised around chatting and reminiscing.

We both said that we never expected to live as long as we did.  He said he had no regrets and had had a good life.  I said I was satisfied with my life but that I did have one regret.

My only regret, I said, is that I won’t be able to send a letter back telling people what dying was like.  Every time I read about someone who’s had a near-death experience, they say that they saw a blinding white light and then came back to life.  I want to write back and say that’s a bunch of bull, that there is no blinding white light, not even a dim bulb.  Or maybe there really is.  I’d be honest about it.  Anyway, I’d like to report back.

I don’t know why I couldn’t.  I’ve got some Forever stamps from the post office, and Forever is the same as Eternity, the place I’m going.  But there might not be any postal service on the other side.  Then what?

I wouldn’t count on email.  Assuming that a perfect infrastructure of electronics could provide service back to this life, then when an email with a return address of Afterlife hits a live person’s inbox, chances are it’d go straight to the Spam folder.

I suppose I could fake it, write the letter now and have someone toss it in a mailbox after I’ve died.  But there’s so much that’s not known, so much I’d have to make up.

As a Catholic I’d be going through either Door Number One or Door Number Two.  (I’ll leave it to you to decide which door leads to where.)  But I’m not a good Catholic and am more of a skeptic, really.  So is there a special afterlife for skeptics?  A place where a clock chimes twelve times and an announcer says, “Twelve noon, maybe”?

And not all faiths go to the Catholic hereafter.  I’d miss my Jewish friends and relatives.  Valhalla might be fun, sitting around drinking mead with raucous Norsemen.  But Buddhists skip it altogether, being reincarnated as fast as they can so they can come back and try again.  And then there are the atheists and agnostics.  If you are faithless, does that mean you also have no afterlife?

Who all would be there?  Everyone I’ve ever met?  Everyone who ever lived?  Man, it’d be crowded, people standing on top of each other.

Would we have cars?  Facebook?  There’s an awful lot I’d have to make up to make it sound authentic.

I got off on this tangent because of a guy I know, not the air force buddy I mentioned earlier but another guy.  This other guy wrote a blog post in which he challenged readers to review their lives by answering deep, deep questions, such as:

“… did you stand in the face of evil and say no?  With a ferocity that surprised you?”

“… did you help somebody when you could and whisper ‘pay it forward’?  And then think to yourself that maybe you had just created a ripple?”

This other guy is our youngest son, Mark.  Mark offers a different approach to thinking about life than I do.  Mark thinks things through, is sensitive; I tend to live by blunder, a hopeless male, indoctrinated by the First Church of John Wayne.  I recommend reading Mark’s blog; it’s proof that intelligent life can still be found in the universe, and on the internet.

But back to where we started.  I visited my air force buddy several times last spring.  We would get hot dogs at Wienerschnitzel and go back to his house for coffee.  That was John’s special treat for himself—a relish dog and coffee.  He was a wealthy man who for himself lived simply and was generous toward others.

He went into hospice care about the time of my last visit and died peacefully at home.  He was a good man who deserves a good afterlife.

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