What happens to us when we die? My guess is that we die. To a dying person, not having to wait around just to watch a favorite TV show is one of the benefits of TiVo.
I found House this spring and summer via my TiVo, Fox, and endless re-runs. House is an irritating, irritable, though brilliant diagnostician—a fictional TV doctor so nasty and sarcastic we’d all like to have him working on our case.
I found Dead Like Me the same way. TiVo and a couple of dozen re-runs.
It’s been a challenge trying to figure out why I missed the first run of both TV series, but I did. Thanks to TiVo and re-runs I can catch up on cool characters just before my own character passes on into oblivion. Or, becomes a tick or tapeworm or perhaps a beagle.
In Dead Like Me, the main character, Georgia Lass, is a pouty, self-absorbed 18-year-old who’s life is ended by a toilet seat which fell from the Soviet-era Mir space station.
George, as co-star Mandy Patinkin calls her, is narrator and protagonist, and becomes a “grim reaper” when she dies. Grim reapers are the un-dead, they don’t go to heaven, they don’t wait in some kind of purgatory, and they don’t even go to hell.
Grim reapers stay on earth and take the souls of others who die or are scheduled to die and help them on their journey to the afterlife, whatever that may be.
Interestingly, Dead Like Me was more about how the living deal with each other than how the dead deal with death.
Dealing with death after the fact can’t be all that hard, can it?. It’s a done deal already. Dealing with death before the fact is something else again.
All this TiVo-ready hospital, sickness, dying, dead people roles got me to thinking. What happens to us when we die?
It’s either nothing, or something else.
Since there’s little evidence to the contrary, I’m going with nothing, though there’s plenty of argumenation for something else.
There’s just little agreement, lots of argumentation, and not much fact, and less evidence—other than we don’t hear much from the dead.
So, what happens to us when we die?
Most of the evidence points to the James Tiberius Kirk response, “We cease to exist.” That means we don’t exist as who we were, and probably don’t exist as anything else, either.
As I said, there’s plenty of room for argumentation here, starting with the age old question, “Why do we die?” It’s probably too late in my personal product life cycle to get started on that one, so I won’t.
Judeo-Christian dogma of a special afterlife, specifically heaven, is also too nebulous for me, faith notwithstanding. Maybe your view is different, but somehow I doubt that a terrorist who blows up an airplane or everyone on a crowded bus will receive 72 virgins in heaven.
Is that even put in writing anywhere? See what faith can do?
Death? Death is the Big Sleep™, the Final Nap, the end result of all those things you did, all those things you wished you’d done but never did, and life’s change event.
Change? Yes, but change to what? Where? Why?
If I could, if I can, I’ll let you know.
I’ve always believed that “we cease to exist” because it makes the most sense to me. The most logical explanation. But I think I do understand (at least a little bit) why so many people want to believe there is something more.
I think that we all do live on in a sense through the memories of others.
I may never have the satisfaction of “knowing,” because for me- seeing is Believing. Blind Faith was a musical group. Then again, from what I can see- the world is flat. And lately, it looks like hell. But it’s not flat. I know nothing. We see how much the world is a better place because of those who just Know 72 virgins are waiting for them.. No, I don’t think we’re Supposed to know. I’d like to think we’re here for a reason (to Be Here Now). Deep down, though- I sometimes feel something (Real? Or programming?) I can’t quite grasp- like the concept of infinity. Which exists. Or God.
I can’t believe you write “Death? Death is the Big Sleep?Ñ¢, the Final Nap, the end result of all those things you did, all those things you wished you?Äôd done but never did, and life?Äôs change event.” after telling us that your days are drawing to a close with you in front of a TiVo. Jeez… Time is short, dear lady, but it’s not gone. You have time to shorten your to-do list, even if only by a few lines.
Before you go, send Barbara Marie out to WinCo (Do they have that in Los Angeles?) to get chocolate-covered sunflower seeds in the bulk food section. Think M&M Peanut, but much smaller and with yummy sunflower seeds in place of peanuts. Colorful raindrops! I’d say they’re heavenly, but I doubt that they have anything that sinful in anyone’s Heaven. Delicious! You can’t go anywhere until you’ve tried them. Heck, drop me an e-mail with a snail address and I’ll send you some.
Note: I did manage to see one episode of Dead Like Me without thinking that I’d just wasted an hour of my life. It struck me as Monty Python meets Twin Peaks. (I also saw one hour of Twin Peaks, but came away from THAT show feeling resentful that it drained an hour from my limited time here.) I did enjoy DLM’s dark humor.
On the afterlife… I think Benedictus de Spinoza came close to the truth of things. Albert Einstein thought so, too. The universe is an elegant and spiritual place that is governed by commandments. The spirit is something we call “nature.” The commandments we call “laws of nature” and they’re inviolate. Einstein spent his life trying to discover a few of them and he did a pretty fair job of it. The notion that there is a personal god for each of us that we can pray to and call upon to do our bidding seems to me to be the height of arrogance… unless one entertains the notion that there are those with divinity so great that they can intercede between common people and their god to guarantee favor. While such a belief seems absurd to me, it helped folks do a first-rate job of furnishing the Vatican.
The idea of a soul that transcends death escapes me. The faithful among us may declare that humankind was never meant to understand such divine mysteries. In that case, it seems fitting and proper that I don’t.
However, I do believe in miracles. I believe that as long as you have a pulse, there is still hope for one of those miracles coming your way. My instruction to you—my request—keep breathing! The world will seem quite a bit colder and lonelier without you.
Hugs,
… JJ
My wife died after a long bout of cancer. Sometimes she could not sleep, particularly late at night. She enjoyed re-runs of Andy Griffith which we taped whenever we could.
Miracles? We don’t believe in miracles anymore. Things just happen. Some good, some bad.
Sounds like Tera doesn’t have many friends.
—-Most of the evidence points to the James Tiberius Kirk response, ?ÄùWe cease to exist.?Äù—-
Eh, there ISN’T any evidence, just a big lack of it. Yeah, the conclusion would be that either we cease, or what we become either can’t or won’t communicate with us in any obvious way.
As for tapeworm vs. beagle vs. tick, I think you will at least come back as a beagle.
I have a special affection for tapeworms. I have one as a pet, because it is the only pet I can remember to feed. . . ;o)
Albert Einstein stated that in effect energy could not be destroyed ?Äì just transformed.
?ÄúLaw of Conservation of Energy
Energy cannot be created or destroyed; it may be changed from one form to another.?Äù
We die; we don?Äôt go in ?Äì we go out ?Äì our energy is transformed out and is everywhere. Might make communicating back to us mortals difficult. ÔÅä
-Gil
Although I am a firm believer in science I also believe that there is much more to the world than what science has uncovered thus far. Radio waves existed long before radios indicated them. Perhaps there are other realms of existence that we are simply unaware of with our present means of sense. Perhaps we get “backed up” to that realm and only the old physical body ceases to exist. I haven’t given up hope of someday meeting Tera. I only hope it is in a place as nice as the Aloha state.
Aloha and Mahalo Nui Loa Tera!
There is a smidgen of evidence about what death might be like. It’s small, but allows us to ponder it a little more concretely.
Think back as far as you can…some of us can get to 2 years old or so (I can’t). Strangely enough, you were here taking in the universe well before your earliest memory. But you have no ability to call that memory up.
Now go just back a bit more. Did you care or feel? No. Were you lonely? No. You just weren’t here. Similar to being put out on the operating table. No thougths, no cognitation.
Strange concept. Difficult to put into words. You were dead before. It’s called ‘You Weren’t Born Yet.’ How did it feel? We’re you somewhere else? Pre-Born might as well be called Death. Same concept. Different period. Death then Life then back to Death.
So as far as I can tell, it’s nothing. I’m with you. We have to enjoy our small blip of time in between those two events.
I can’t remember last week- and, OK, most of the 60’s. But I know I was there. I wasn’t “dead yet.”
Then there are what appear to be dreams in which you are obviously present.
Like I’ve said before- the world isn’t flat. But it sure appears to be.
My ego would like assurance that I go on as me and nothing or nobody else. Who knows?
I think Tera nailed it. She will be greatly missed.
i don’t think it is fair at all to blame faith for all the woes in the world. i think we need to take responsibility for our own wrongs and evils. we are finite beings in search for truth and mercy as well, and there is an infinite being reaching out his righteous hand to us to save us, and to grant us some much needed mercy.
as far as death is concerned; death as we all come to know it, is not death at all, but the confirmation of a death that has already taken place. look at a rose for instance, we pluck it from its source: it looks pretty, smells lovely, and with age starts to wither away, and eventually it will blow away like dust in the air never to be remembered again. this is where we all are at this juncture of existence. we have been plucked from our source, waiting for what we think death is- to come, when actuality we are already dead.
i hope you take into consideration what i said, not right away discount what faith can access you to. then and only then can truth come. we are raised to believe in this world, seeing is believing, but God wants you to believe, then he’ll show you what you could not see before.
Tera passed over on August 20th, 2006. I still can’t believe she’s gone. I miss you, Tera, please come visit.