I know that life goes on just perfectly and everything is just the way it should be. Still there are times when my heart feels like breaking and anywhere is where I’d rather be.
I think about death more. I don’t obsess about it but I wonder about death at times; the mystery of it, the actual experience, the afterlife. I tend to reject any sentimentality that has the intention of making death feel good, but who knows? Maybe the ancestors really are looking down on us. Or maybe our loved ones have reincarnated, been reborn into a new family in, for example, Syria. Oh, I hope not there. Or maybe as a female in Afghanistan. Oh, I hope not. Maybe it’s best not to know.
I read Raymond Moody’s book, Life After Life, way back in the early ’80’s and have since read almost every book and article printed about NDE’s, Near Death Experiences, so it isn’t exactly a new “obsession.” I’ve often said that the most spiritual book I ever read was Closer to the Light, by Melvin Morse, M.D. A pediatrician, Morse documented the NDE’s of children he spent time with at Children’s Hospital in Seattle. I wondered at the time if the Rose Man was having an out-of-body experience in ICU, the ventilator alone delivering the “breath of life.” The morning of the last day of his earthly life I read an article in Guideposts magazine about a NDE written by Mary C. Neal, M.D. She was kayaking with her husband in Chile when it capsized and she was underwater for eleven minutes. She wrote, “A feeling of absolute love pierced me, greater than anything I’d ever known.” Her NDE ended when her companions on the other side turned and said, “Not yet; it’s not your time…” It was then that I knew with conviction that it was the Rose Man’s “time.” It was Dr. Neal’s description of her experience that provided the peace to accept the inevitable.
Next month I will attend the meeting of the local chapter of IANDS, the International Association for Near Death Studies. The guest speaker is Dr. Mary C. Neal.
To have someone to share with and someone I can care with… Sometimes I feel like a sad song, like I’m all alone without you. (John Denver)
rosesinjanuarydotcom 
Thank you for sharing your journey with us. Personally, I hold to the truths found in the Bible about eternal life… Jesus said (recorded in John 10) “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.” He gives eternal life… while we don’t know exactly what that life will look like, I trust it will be good.
Thanks, Barb. My journey has been quite similar, and those same books have given me a lot of comfort— and a renewal of faith in my younger years. While we cannot know what is to come, we can “walk by faith and not by sight.”