life and death

by Rain Trueax
 

There is one given in life and really only one. Once we are born, we will die. Now some believe only the body dies. The soul lives on for the body to be resurrected (not sure in what form but sounds like it'd be good. The Apostle Paul said without that resurrection, Christians were being fooled). Whatever the case, of an afterlife, our current bodies do die. While that might seem a ways off for some, it's closer for others-- like the aged. What does it mean?

As a young woman, for whatever reason, I thought I'd not live over 30. I even

told my husband-to-be that I didn't expect to live that long.  When I passed 30 (the age I was in the picture alongside), I didn't have another prediction and still do not. I do know how tough it is to get really old-- I've seen it. 

My dad died at 70 but he'd had heart problems for years before. He died at the mobile home of my parents on our farm. My mother lived years longer, but she also died in that mobile home. She didn't know she was that sick. We did not either, but we did know she probably had congestive heart failure, which can go on a long time. The day before our son's wedding, she thought she had the flu and said she'd not be able to come. I asked her if she wanted to see the doctor. She sharply said no. The day after the wedding, our son and daughter-in-law came to the farm and visited with her. They didn't think she looked good. The next day, she didn't answer the knock at her door, and my husband pried it open. She was dead in her own bed. She was 85.

I've thought hers was actually a good age to get to be. She was still able to be active-- relatively since she was legally blind due to macular degeneration. She exercised and maintained her home with four cats and a dog-- maybe not as well as we thought, but she lived on her own. We are not all so fortunate. In the picture alongside here, was the year before she died. I was 55. It was a good time in my life. If you are approaching your 50s, seriously, those are good years. You got a lot of things done and still are strong. I wasn't thinking about dying at that point but instead of living.

I remember thinking when my mom died. Now she knows what's on the other side. That is the exciting part of death. We will know... or we won't and we won't know anything. What is on the other side though is the mystery, despite some thinking they are sure. The thing is many of those who 'know' do not agree on what it is.

In my life, I've wondered on the subject of what's over there. I don't right now fear death (that might come), but the dying process, that's more scary as it can mean lack of mental capacity as well as a lot of pain of deteriorating abilities. We just don't know about that either.

One thought I've had on aging-- beyond the dying part-- is that it's really not like the professionals tell us. I think there are only three ways to divide us as we age-- Youth, Middle-Age and Old Age. That's it. Once you are out of youth, you are into middle years, which last a LOT of years if no illness interrupts it. I suppose it could be divided into fertile and not fertile but that can be decided by more than years. Here's why I think three divisions work. Youth is much impacted by hormones. So is old age. They are the opposite process of what life is all about.

So anyway, what do I think is over there? There were some years, a lot of them, where I thought a religion held the answer. When I stopped thinking that, I did a lot of research on reincarnation. I asked questions and read books. Then I spent a summer doing deep meditations intended to help me connect with past lives I might have lived. 

The way you do that is through guided meditations. Some say it's too risky to do that work on your own but I had the feeling I'd not get anything I could not handle. Basically, you go down steps or something similar to take you deeper into your hidden memories. I got pretty good at the deep meditations and retrieved 6 or 7 possible lives.

At the end of that summer, I found a hypnotherapist, who worked on past lives. Through her I added one more-- due to her questions. Can I say I actually lived any of them? 

Well, I am a writer and I do create lives. The hypnotherapist though asked if when I create those lives, do I cry as I see the lives. Well, I don't, but I know writers, who do. I did cry as I 'recalled' those lives. I can still see some of the images from them. In one of them, an Apache life, I saw a very sad ending to a lot of mistakes. Actually, i saw that in many of them.

The hypnotherapist said she saw a karmic pattern in them. Maybe so. I just hope i am living this life in a way that is not building up karmic debt :)

None of those that I got that summer were the one I grew up thinking I remembered. I thought I had died in a small hotel room. I was a man and either it was from a heart attack or I had been shot-- maybe a mobster. I wasn't sure though whether any of that was real as maybe i saw a movie and it had come from it (my parents took us to drive-ins). 

I won't know for sure about any of this until the moment I die. I am not planning to rush to that time. I still might have important things to do-- one of which is experience old age. I do though wonder sometimes. When someone says they know, I ask them what they know. When their answer is religion, i am happy for them but it's not my answer.

Where I am is why I call life mystery. After years of trying to figure it out through religion and experimenting with mysticism, I don't know and am going to leave it that way. The only certainty is that someday I'll be there-- but at what age, I have no idea. I do know it's likely closer for me than others-- maybe...