The Afterlife

My own thoughts about heaven and hell are contradictory. I am a scientific being with a supreme belief that science can and does explain everything. I was not raised with religion beyond a menorah and potato pancakes and I never feared a hell or aspired to a heaven. Still, when I think of my dead relatives, I think of them as being “up there,” looking down on me, and occasionally impacting my day-to-day life. It doesn’t make any sense. I shouldn’t look skyward when I think about my dad, but I do.


Jews, at least the ones that raised me, don’t believe in “going to a better place.” When a Jew dies it is not because Jesus wanted that person in “HIS” world rather than in ours. When a Jew dies it is because it is our time: Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Although I was raised with very little religion and even less faith, I was raised with a Jewish perspective on death and dying. And it worked for me. I was taught to say “I hope you are able to find comfort in the memories of your (mother/father/grandparent).” I was taught to find comfort in my own memories.

I lost friends earlier than most: traffic accidents, drunk driving, suicide; but the first truly debilitating loss came when I was already 24 and my grandmother passed away. It was a real turning point in my life as it was the first real experience I had with permanence. It seemed everything else in my life was fluid; things I didn't like could be fixed or done over. But with my grandmother gone I experienced for the first time what “never” meant. All my truths were reset. I actually stopped writing for a long time after her death. I think it was because I realized I didn’t know anything about anything.

After her death, I was lucky to be visited by her in very vivid dreams. Some of them took place in the past – in her old house when I was a kid – and some of them took place in the future – my cousin’s wedding that was still years away. And some of them, the ones I liked the most, were actual conversations between my dead grandmother and me. Conversations in which she acknowledged that she was indeed gone and present in my dream at the same time. This was the first time I came up against things that couldn’t be explained by science. Except that they could.

What if my grandmother’s visits, and later, my grandfather’s and my dad’s, were not a “sign” of a spiritual life in the hereafter – what if they were that life? What I mean to say is: when a song comes on the radio and it seems that my dead father tuned it in specifically for me, maybe the feeling I have in my gut is heaven. Maybe heaven doesn’t exist for the dead; maybe it is a creation of the living, but one that does not negate it any way.

It’s not that it is “made-up” and therefore “make-believe,” maybe making it up, makes it so.

Yesterday I went to a JV Jags basketball game. Just after half-time I started to have a physical reaction to being in a gym and watching kids play ball. The quality of the light, the sounds, the smells all reminded me of my childhood. I don’t know how much of my time was spent in a gym watching my dad’s teams play, but sometimes it feels like it was 90% of the 80s.



I started to tear up, but I was mostly able to hold it together. Then my clothing started to feel like it was too tight. Had I not been video taping the game, I would have stepped outside. Had SMS’s kids not been frittering away a 12-point lead, I would have stepped outside. But I didn’t want to miss anything and I wanted to support my husband and take a good game video for him to use in practice. I thought I would be ok.

But then a kid went down and out of the stands walked a 300lb man in a dark velour (possibly Fila) tracksuit. Although he was black and wearing a hat, something my dad never did, he walked like he owned the world (maybe all “heavyset” men walk the same way?) and I lost my composure.

Did the universe conspire to give me just a bit more than I could handle? Did my dad have something to do with the series of events that left me a shivering mess in the JCC bathroom? Or is it just the fact that I can have these feelings at all – that I can be moved to tears by a fat man in a tracksuit (who turned out to be the varsity coach) – that IS my heaven and not a “symptom” or a "sign" of it.

I have no idea.

I would like to think my father is programming the radio stations I listen to – it would certainly explain the amount of Queen played on the radio out here and the fact that Rod Stewart’s "Young Turks" was playing on my way to Costco this morning. But my dad raised me to put my trust in science. And my mom taught me that because you are the one that looks yourself in the mirror every morning that you are responsible to you, and not a higher power.

I did make it through the game to see the JV Jags pull out their first win. SMS was thrilled and my freak-out only dampened the mood slightly.

As the second anniversary of my father’s death approaches I still find it utterly impossible that he is dead. And yet, I know he is.