What Happens When You Die?

Man's fanciful image of God - Michaelangelo style

I don't know.  Okay, that's my post.

Oh yes, I have more to say on this subject.  This morning, after eating breakfast and bushing my teeth, I positioned myself before my iMac 17 inch big screen computer, all revved up to finish posting all my Lewes Presbyterian Cemetery photos to Find a Grave.com.  

I click on the Find a Grave icon on my toolbar.  Nothing.  I click again.  Again, nothing.  Okay.  Next step.  I reboot my computer.  Maybe I have to clear out my cache (look it up).  Then I click on F.A.G. grave icon again.  Still nothing.  

Then I search the Internet to see if Find a Grave's website has crashed.  Nothing except complaints about Find a Grave and all the "drama" (whatever that is).  

So here is my backup activity plan for this morning.  I'll write a blog post about what happens when you die?  I don't know.

Perhaps I should expand.  What I am pretty sure of is that when we die we don't ascent to Heaven on giant white feathered bird wings, dressed in a gossamer white nightgown to meet God sitting on a gold throne int he clouds.  You all know God don't you?  He looks like Charlton Heston (in his Moses "Ten Commandments Days", not in his Right Wing, "pry my cold dead hands from this gun"  days).  God, a white haired and bearded old man dressed in a white over one shoulder toga which displays his massive triceps, THAT GOD.  Oh no,  you're not going to meet HIM.  

Here is what I THINK happens.  NOTHING.  Yep, a BIG NOTHING.  Just a big deep VOID.

Oh sure, I'm all for folks having a "belief" (aka "faith") in what happens.  If that what makes you comfortable and able to get through life, then I'm all for it.  I'm not one nor have I ever been to foist my beliefs on someone else unlike many others of "the faith", whatever religion.  I've always said "If that is what works for you, then go for it!"  But by the same token don't get all sanctimonious and issue your "I'll pray for you" condescending remarks to me.

Joan of Arc being burned at the stake because she didn't Believe

I imagine death to be like the time I was given anesthesia to knock me out before having a colonoscopy last year.  Actually, that was quite a trip.  I don't even remember going out nor do I remember waking up.  Sort of nice actually.

To me the worst part about death is getting there, not actually when you die.  Dying is the release from our bodily form. This overcoat our spirit inhabits while we're on this earth.

I remember the first time I saw a dead person, in person.  It was at my Uncle John Tipton's funeral. My Uncle John died in 1962 from burns he suffered from getting his coverall pants on fire from spilled turpentine and a carelessly discarded cigarette butt.  Ironically he had survived World War II in spite of being captured by the Germans and held as a prisoner of war.  Uncle John as a paratrooper who was captured behind enemy lines in Holland.  He escaped twice from the German prisoner of war camp only to be recaptured twice.  Uncle John survived World War II but didn't survive a cigarette butt.

John Hannum Tipton 1922 - 1961

I was in the Army at the time of his death and called home to be a pall bearer at his funeral.  I remember going past his open casket and looking at my 39 year old uncle, who was so vibrant and full of life the last time I saw him.  I looked at his body and realized I was looking at a shell.  He wasn't "there" anymore.  His body in that open casket could just as well have been an overcoat with his name on it.  

Since that funeral I have seen other dead bodies at funerals, including my Mother and father.  I've always had the same reaction...there weren't "there" anymore.  I had no feeling at all for their shell.  They were gone.  Only their memory will stay alive.  And what keeps their memory alive is a memorial that the family leaves behind.  Thus that is why I believe in funerals, cemeteries, headstones and any other kind of memorial. 

So where does the essence of that person go when they die?  Again, I don't know but the only thing that makes sense to me is that the "essence" is dispersed throughout the universe.  We are not somehow magically transported in our bodily form or spiritual form with our memories intact to another place.  Just doesn't make sense, faith of not.  

So to all of you who have the faith, more power to you.  I'm happy for you that you have that comfort and don't have to think about what really happens when you die which is nothing.  

Now for those of you who doubt me, I can only say one thing.  Prove it to me.  As far as I know God and Jesus only talks to people like Pat Robertson and the Pope.  He doesn't talk to regular folk like me. 

Does He talk to you?  Tell me about it.