2019 was an incredible year. For me, it was really sad, having lost both of my octogenarian parents just 102 days apart. Dad died 9 days before my 59th birthday.
2019 was also the year of my spiritual awakening. Each individual event, taken alone, could be dismissed as a hallucination, or just something weird that happened. But taken together, there is something unmistakable here.
I now choose to believe in life after death. There is something there. Something that science cannot tell us about happened as Dad was dying. I witnessed the evidence of it with my own eyes. I was wide awake and sober, in-fact, I had not had a drink in 4 years. And I was not alone. My sister and her husband witnessed Dad’s talk of the journey he was about to go on, and his pleading, also.
I do not know whether there is a Supreme Being. But, unlike before August 2019, I am now open to the possibility. If I was wrong about the idea of life after death, then it stands to reason that I may be wrong about the existence of a Supreme Being — be that the one the Christians call God, or something else altogether.
When I was attending the bible study with my C1 friends around 1984, I explained that going from not having faith to having faith was not as simple as turning a light switch on or off. Dad’s passing was an amazing experience. It is something that I will remember for the rest of my life. I have come away from this episode in my life, with a newfound respect for what awaits me at the end of my life. I choose to believe that something happened in Dad’s bedroom that is beyond my understanding. I believe the faith light switch has just been turned on.
When I was 39, I first began to be aware of my own mortality. No longer did I feel invulnerable as all 20-year-olds do. I was about to turn 40. I was about to be, what I had always considered, almost dead. It scared me. Dad died 9 days before my 59th birthday. Until that day, when Dad died, my fear of my mortality was still very real. But since witnessing Dad’s death, I am no longer afraid. I still do not want to die anytime soon, but I no longer fear it. There IS something there, beyond life. Life after death was not just a fairy tale as Dad had claimed so many times throughout his life.
Who was he pleading with? Does the soul arrive to be judged by St Peter before the body dies? Was he pleading with St Peter? Or was he pleading with Mom? Or was it somebody else? Or did he hear our voices around him and was pleading to us to let his suffering end?
He moved his head. He looked upward toward the ceiling. I choose to believe that he did not think he was pleading with us.
I choose to believe that he was in communication with someone or something that our science cannot explain.
I choose to believe that he lived on after his death..
All those years ago, I prayed to God to help me find faith. Did Dad have to endure that death because he failed to teach me about God? Was this whole thing orchestrated to teach Dad a lesson and help me to find faith, thus honoring my prayer of 25 years ago?
I choose to believe that that is possible.