Where Do We Go When We Die?

There are many questions that haunt the living when they have lost a loved one. The most common one being -Where are they now?

If only we could have one last chat with them and confirm their existence in some realm of this world, we would feel some sort of relief. But it almost feels like they performed the ultimate vanishing act and disappeared from the face of the Earth.

We tell the grieving family, their loved one still lives in their heart and watches over them. Does this emotional mumbo jumbo hold any truth or is it just meant to soften the heavy blow and help the bereaved accept their new harsh reality?

Clinically death begins when our heart stops beating and our breathing ceases. One door closes but does another door open in that blurred space?

My brother died in mid December. But I found out about his death only 2 weeks later.

I kept going back to the day he died. What was I doing that day? Did he send me any sign from the great beyond to let me know he was now gracing the heavens?

It might be wishful thinking but strangely I feel he did. On the day he died, I was alone at home watching Netflix and cleaning, blissfully unaware that life was seeping out of my sibling.

I was in another room when I heard a jarring sound. I followed the sound to the dining room. There lying on the table was my daughter's broken-down toy phone. It was ringing without anyone pressing on it. It had never rung like that before.

I assumed it was glitching and left the room, only for it to ring and summon me again. I found that very odd, but never gave it much thought. A few days later I had packed up a bunch of the kid's toys they were no longer playing with to donate. This toy phone was also tossed into the bag and left in the garage.

A week later I would come to know my brother died and would travel to his home out of state to complete all the formalities. I returned home with a trash bag containing remnants of his life — documents, and mementos I picked up while clearing out his apartment.

I was in the garage sorting out all his stuff with a heavy heart when I again heard the jarring music. I followed the sound and found the bag in a corner. Again this phone was ringing with no outside stimulus.

I took the phone and this time paid close attention to it. Was my brother trying to make his presence known to me? I took the phone out of the bag and have since kept it with me. It has never rung again.

The night after my brother’s ashes came home, I had another strange incident. It was a very hard day seeing his life reduced to a little bag of ashes. My parents and I were very distraught and couldn’t stop wondering if he had suffered in his last moments.

We all went to sleep distressed. In the middle of the night, my daughter's stuffed toy, a prayer bunny began to sing “Yes, Jesus loves me, this I know for the bible tell me so.”

I bolted up from sleep. This stuffed bunny has to be pressed hard for it to sing, plus its batteries were so weak, that the music never played properly even when it was pressed. But here it was at 2.30 am sitting on the nightstand singing “Jesus loves me, this I know.”

That really spooked me. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was my brother’s way of telling us that his suffering was over and he was now in a better place.

I had read stories of people having vivid dreams when their loved ones died. It was considered a visitation from the other side. I pleaded with my brother night after night to come to me in a dream, but he never did. My mother would occasionally say she had a vague fleeting dream of him.

But it was my 12-year-old son’s dream that really caught my attention. I could never put my finger on it, but my son has always had an uncanny ability to decipher the unsaid and sense the unseen.

In his dream, he saw my brother sweating on the floor and the thermometer showing 101 degrees. After some time he floated away to the top. Was his dream just a dream or my brother’s last moments? I will never know.

I had always been fascinated by mediums ever since I saw the movie ‘Ghost’ as a child. Yet I was a skeptic. I wasn’t fully sold on the concept that some people had the ability to communicate with the dead. It seemed too far fetched.

It wasn’t until I was much older when I started thinking there might be some truth to it all. There were more accounts of people’s near-death experiences and mediums communicating with deceased family members, some even solving missing person cases.

They all concurred on the fact that our loved ones didn't cease to exist when they died.

It gave me hope that maybe I could make some kind of contact with my brother. I scoured the internet for mediums, checked ratings, and reviews. I knew there were many frauds who preyed on the grief of people just to make money. The famous ones were too expensive. John Edwards — private session- $950.

I wanted to connect with my brother but not go broke! In the end, I found a medium on guess where? — Medium.

I had read a lot of her stories and felt she was credible. I toyed with the idea for long. Should I trust a complete stranger? What was the need for all this? My brother was never coming back. In the end, I gave in to my curiosity and I requested a reading.

It was a fairly straightforward process. My brother’s name and photo were exchanged through email. We never spoke or virtually met each other. I didn’t disclose my complete name knowing that a google search would provide all the information. The payment was agreed and it was reasonable.

She asked me if there was anything specific I wanted to know. She would write the thoughts as it came to her and get back to me in a few days.

Four days later she sent me a message detailing her communication with my brother. She did get a lot of his health information correct which only a few people knew. I felt she was able to correctly describe his relationship with my parents and his internal struggles.

There was equally lots of vague stuff that didn’t make sense to me. Then there was stuff which could apply to anyone who had lost a loved one, like how they love us and miss us.

In all, the session didn’t reveal anything new to me. But it did feel like my brother softly whispered to me in the wind and that in itself was a big deal to me.

I guess, when you have lost someone, you’ll take anything you can get as a positive sign of their existence- a broken toy phone crackling, or even just a flickering light bulb.

My brother’s photons may no longer vibrate in this earthly realm but none the less, they still pulse in some rearranged form, not one bit diminished. That being said, rearranged photons bring little comfort, but for now, that’s all we’ll have.

My brother is out of reach, indescribably far yet he in some sense he is right here, incredibly near.