Death Comes

My phone rang in the dark hours of the morning. The caller was the wife of a friend. My friend had been suffering from cancer for many months, and she called to tell me that he had just died. It was sad news, but his life had essentially ended weeks earlier and had become only suffering. He’s gone now, and I will miss him. But we’re all terminal, every one of us.

He (and his wife) lived in another country, so I won’t be attending his funeral. But I’m not really good at handling notices of a friend or loved one’s passing. It’s awkward. I feel there is something special I should say. I feel if I could find the right words, I could lift some of the grief from the other person. But I don’t know what those words would be. I told her I was sorry to hear of his death but I thought, given his suffering, it was also a good thing for him. I thanked her for calling me. I told her if she needed to talk, I would be here for her.

I’ve been down this road before. Grandparents, parents, close friends, and yes, even the death of a beloved pet can cause grief. It’s a wound that requires time to heal, as all wounds do. That’s a cliché, of course, but it’s still true. When you’re not a close relative of the departed, you feel like a bystander. You’re watching events from the “outside” and feel unable to be of any help.

My belief is that death is not the end of our journey. It is a “passing over” from this world to another existence. I have read dozens of books about the experiences of people who were clinically dead and were revived, and many of those people, after their near-death experience, recounted an amazing journey. For those people, the near-death experience was so powerful that it changed their lives in major ways. So I believe there is life after our bodies die. I believe, not because of religion, and not because of philosophy, and not because I want there to be life after death; I believe in an afterlife because of descriptions of it from thousands of people who went there. As a science-oriented person, I also understand that the evidence is anecdotal, meaning it cannot constitute proof, but for now it’s all we have so it will have to suffice.