When Life Ends…

Is that all there is?

As humans, most of us wonder at some point in our lives, what happens when we die?

Life after death is a subject broached by many on here, including myself. Now a new movie from Angel Studios entitled ‘After Death’, which is currently being promoted in theatres nationwide, tells first-hand stories of many who have experienced ‘near-death’ experiences.

Years ago, I was afraid of being thought of as a fool when discussing what I knew. I remain steadfast today in my belief in life after death, for two reasons: my Dad and my Grandfather. This is the brief story of each, as told to me by them some 15 years apart, and just a few years before each passed away.

My Dad was afraid to tell anyone but me his story. In fact, he made me promise not to tell anyone his story until he was gone. This was 1978 and I was 27 years old. He passed away in 1983.

My Grandfather, on the other hand, talked to me about his assuredness in a life after death for every living thing on the planet. The difference was that he never experienced it and my father did.

My grandfather described to me how and why he knew an afterlife is not only possible but is entirely unavoidable. An afterlife must happen. What that would be he couldn’t say, but he knew it would happen for all. How could he have known this?

Dad had always been in poor health. He suffered a stroke when he was in his early 40s. He had never taken care of himself or his health. He worked too much, drank too much, smoked too much, over-ate, and never exercised. His drinking led to him becoming addicted to alcohol, an addict if you will. He passed away when I was only 32 years old. He was 57.

His near-death story is similar to many others who have had this experience. He was dead serious, if not scared. Indeed, he was in awe of what happened and what he had witnessed.

Dad was unresponsive in the ambulance.

It was late Fall in 1978. Never responding to a call from Mom that dinner was ready, I went upstairs to check on him. I couldn’t wake him and couldn’t detect a pulse. I yelled downstairs for Mom to call 911.

They lived in “the sticks” over 30 minutes from the nearest hospital. Nights were pitch black there. When the ambulance arrived over 30 minutes after we called 911, they explained they couldn’t find the house in the dark. I was waiting out in the street to flag them down. My Dad wasn’t breathing when they got him into the ambulance. The medics told me at the hospital they had tried, but couldn’t resuscitate him in the ambulance, and had him on a breathing machine. He was medically DOA at the hospital.

I followed the ambulance in my Dad’s car, a ’65 Lincoln with suicide doors that he loved more than anything. The ambulance was hitting speeds up to 110 or more. So was I. They turned a 30-plus minute drive into a 20-minute drive over long, single-lane, winding country roads, at night, and in the dark. Later, I laughingly told my Dad how fast I had driven his Lincoln. “Is it okay?” he asked with a smile.

He was rushed inside on a gurney, and again attempts were made to resuscitate him. I stood there the entire time. He had been clinically dead for almost an hour, but they had been able to keep oxygen flowing to the brain mechanically I assumed. Using electro-shock on the heart, as he lay there in the hospital, they suddenly detected a slight heartbeat. He was put on a respirator to keep his heart beating.

I was told by doctors that they had no idea how much damage was done, or even if or when he would come to. I called my Mom and headed home.

A Near-Death Experience

We received a call the next day and they said he was awake and we could visit for a short time. Early that afternoon we arrived at the hospital, and Mom went in to see him first. I was the last to go in and relayed to Dad the events, starting with him being transported from the house and my hauling ass behind the ambulance.

I never imagined his response. “I know,” he said. “I saw and heard it all.” His response sent shivers down my spine. I was literally dumbfounded by his comment. I just stared at him and asked “How?!”

He told me to come closer to the bed, and then he told me the story in a whisper.

Watching from above as the ambulance sped away into the night with him in it, he said he was drawn to a warm, bright light that was at the end of a tunnel. He floated down this tunnel toward the light and its warmth. The best feeling of happiness he had ever experienced he told me later. He was overwhelmed from seeing and speaking with old friends and family long since gone. They were equally as joyful and welcoming, he said.

But there was a voice that grew louder and louder, coming from the very people he saw there. Though smiling, they (and the voice) told him he had to go back. It wasn’t his time, the voice said. He remembered a deep sadness at having to leave.

Suddenly he was in the hospital again, but floating above the room, and looking down at me and the doctors working on him. He told me word for word what the doctors and I had said. It was as if he were in the room and a part of the conversation. He said it was then he realized he was in the room, and floating above. Then it all went black until he woke the next day and relayed this story to me.

“Don’t ever say a word to anyone, not even your mother. They will all think I’m crazy.” I never said a word until after he passed. Of course, I was not believed when I did. But I’m good with that.

My Grandfather was dying from inoperable lung cancer.

In a series of stories I have previously written entitled “Conversations with My Grandfather” I have discussed my early evening visits with him and my grandmother. I wish those visits had been many more in number than they were. Sometimes, in my head, I think they were, but they were never enough and far too few, as I look back upon them.

He and I talked at times about life after death and this is what caused my grandfather to finally explain to me his belief. He almost became a priest and had at one point in his life studied to do so. Then came WWI which dramatically altered his view of the world I believe, though he never said as much.

He was a heavily decorated war veteran, receiving recognition for bravery from both France and the United States. Holding himself out as a decoy by walking down a street in a small town in France, he drew German sniper fire and was injured, but American snipers took out the German sniper before he was killed. After the war, he ended any aspirations to become a priest, and never set foot inside a church again.

My grandfather went on in life to study to become a criminal defense attorney and spent much of his time donating his skills to those who couldn’t afford them. He traveled to Attica State Prison in NY on Wednesdays for years, providing free legal services to prisoners. He donated his time to the Seneca Indians in WNY as well, eventually being accepted into the tribe as an honorary member.

Life after death… We don’t die.

Always an inquisitive person, and highly intelligent, my grandfather read a lot. He was self-taught in Latin, and in German to communicate with my grandmother, especially when they didn’t want us to know what they were talking about. He was 110% Irish, from a poor family, and spent much of his childhood in foster care.

During one of our evening talks the subject segued to life after death. His comment: “We don’t die. Nothing dies. It’s virtually impossible for our soul, our being, to die.” I was caught off-guard.

“Of course we die,” I said. “Everything dies eventually.”

His explanation was this. He believed we all have a soul… that every living entity in the universe, whether flowers, insects, animals, or humans, possesses energy and therefore, a soul. Surrounding our brains, and embodied within all living things, is a pure energy. Energy is literally indestructible. When a living thing “dies” only the physical body, the physical make-up of that entity dies. Not the energy that the body holds within it. “Energy, he stated factually, must go somewhere.”

Now he had my attention. If energy is indeed our soul, and energy doesn’t die and must go somewhere, then where? This is the million-dollar question. Here is the answer.

This brought the conversation to near-death experiences and that warm, bright, white light drawing people to it after they die. “This, he said, is where all that energy is going. It’s returning to where it came from. It’s the natural path that would be taken by pure energy. That white light mentioned so many times in near-death experiences is energy, our energy, and the energy of every living thing returning to its beginning, its source.”

This theory of my Grandfather’s is also, as he told me, scientifically factual. The energy within all of us is a fact.

As an aside to this theory, he also stated he believed that when it rained and snowed, indicating higher humidity or moisture in the air, our energy field was short-circuited by the higher moisture content in the air. This would explain why we did things we might not normally do on a nice sunny day.

But in the end, my Grandfather believed, as do I, that our souls would always return to what we refer to as God, to a universal source of knowledge, energy, and enlightenment, a source of everything we know and think we know, the universal source of all life. This too seems to make logical sense. And is this not what we believe “God” to be?

You tell me.