What Happens After This Life?

It’s Spring now and everything is in bloom, which kind of reflects the same season I am in. A season of blossoming into the woman I knew in my heart I was always meant to become.

Speaking of blossoming, there is a jasmine bush right outside my house and everytime I walk past it and I inhale the sweet perfume … I think about my grandmother.

She passed a few years ago around this time. There’s not really enough words to describe what it felt like to say goodbye to someone who knew you, and loved you so well. I just felt incredibly incomplete for a time without her guiding me, laughing with me, hearing her voice or holding her hands in mine.

She knew all my wit, my jokes, and my habits, but she also knew of my loss, my childhood, my family and my pain. I sought her for advice over coffee, she helped wipe away my tears, and she made me feel safe when the world felt scary.

Next month is November, and I always think about her especially as it was her birthday and the month she passed. I was there for all of it. Each new day she slipped away a little more, and grew a little more tired, a little less like herself. I would cheer her up even though I didn’t feel cheery. And when the time came to leave us, I held her hand and watched her soul slip away.

Being the first time I had witnessed death face to face, I had mixed emotions. She looked peaceful like she was sleeping, but I knew she wasn’t there anymore.

My dog died a few months later after that, and all I felt around me was a painful finality. I knew death was inevitable but I wanted the people and the pets I cherished in life to stay. It was familiar, it was comfortable, it was home. It didn’t matter what age I was, death was still a hard thing to grapple with, and questions of the afterlife had re-surfaced again. Where do we go after this? Will death be painful? Is there a God? Is there a heaven?

Fear was the topic of discussion at the recent Garden meeting. Some people had strange phobias of lizards, and others of enclosed spaces but mine was death. The not knowing what how and when and why. But it wasn’t only death, it was the thought of eternity as well.

The first time I realised what eternity meant I was fifteen. My friend from high school got a blood clot in his brain and died in his sleep. I used to lay awake at night thinking about the universe, the infinite cosmos, the idea of heaven and our souls living on forever. But I became riddled with anxiety thinking about forever and ever. Eternity meant there was no ending and to my human mind forever was a very long time.

I didn’t know which was worse the atheist theory that we just die and don’t go anywhere or the thought of living on, and on and on. Both ideas felt scary to me. I didn’t want my friends life to just end though. He wanted so much in this life. He would tell me his dreams of becoming a movie director or an actor or comedian. He was full of zest for life, and then one day after Christmas, he was just gone. I think that was the first time I ever really understood the value of our time on earth and what we did with it.

My friend B doesn’t believe we go to heaven. Even when I brought up his mum in conversation , he chose to believe her life just ended when it was meant to and there was no God or greater plan. I just nodded and said I respected his choice even though it differed from mine, but there is a sadness in realising others don’t have the same hope you do.

The same hope that lives inside me, promising me I’ll see my grandparents in heaven one day and all the ones I’ve loved and lost. While I am fearful of death, the idea of heaven and reuniting with these people one day shines a light in the darkness and gives me comfort and strength.

I believe there is a greater plan after death. Life on earth cannot be our final destination, it is just the journey. A place where we learn love, pain, sadness, joy, anger, regret, grief, generosity, compassion, faith, strength, loneliness, betrayal, brokenness, redemption… Heaven is where our treasures are stored with people we have loved and both lost on earth. People are who we are called to serve after all on earth.

People are what brought God to send his son Jesus to the world. And in death people are brought back to be with God.

I wonder what it might be like to meet God face to face one day. The all knowing, the all powerful, the all loving and most perfect. To be in the midst of such perfection one day when my last breath has been taken. A sinner on earth, seeking to have the character of God. The greatest quest in my life, the biggest part of my soul, everything I have strived for. I would have so many questions to ask, about life, about love, about God’s plan for it all.

That is why I don’t want to fear death. I want to see it as something that reunites me with my maker. I don’t want to see it as the end but as my beginning. But I do believe the fear lies in not living life to the fullest. In not taking chances, in not giving generously to those in need, in holding back apologies because of pride.

I want to conquer fears, cross off things on my bucket list, visit places that reflect God’s beauty, live everyday feeling blessed to be alive and pass on that kind of joy to others.

How do you want to live your life on earth?