Never having been there, I am short of first-hand knowledge of the afterlife. Nonetheless, my focus here is to treat this topic as a thought experiment, including what I and others have imagined about life in the hereafter.
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When I was a kid, an athlete who hit a home run or scored a touchdown didn’t make an enormous deal of it. Today, a significant number point to the sky, presumably to heaven, to give thanks.
In some cases, this represents a “Gott mit uns” attitude, a tribal view some countries adopt in and out of war-time: “God on our side.”
Other jocks state they are expressing gratitude for the gift of health and talent they received from God. This assumes one’s definition of an omnipotent deity includes distributing individualized skills to humans.
A casual conversation about heaven often includes the hope that our parents are looking after us from beyond the grave.
Of course, the thought is lovely. But what implications follow if paradise consists of people concerned about what is going on back home?
One such question this raises is how interest in our sometimes problematic lives might interfere with their never-ending happiness once they have entered the great beyond? Witnessing a child’s continuing hardships, accidents, injuries, and disappointments is heartbreaking and challenging enough when you live here.
Who among us wishes for emotional suffering to be written in the playbook of life after death?
Instead, let’s assume “the dead don’t care,” a refrain in Thomas Lynch’s book Undertakings. Lynch is a published poet and a professional undertaker, so his vantage point is unique. If our parents and loved ones no longer care about us (assuming they reside in heaven), they must be different creatures than those we knew on Earth.
Consistent with Lynch, when the actress Farrah Fawcett died in 2009, Michael Jackson’s nearly simultaneous demise overshadowed her life’s conclusion. A few of my patients expressed sadness that the media didn’t attend more to her passing. As Thomas Lynch envisions it, however, Farrah wasn’t bothered.
Again, “not caring” appears outside our customary belief about the nature of the hereafter. The petty jealousies of life, the hunger, the (at least) occasional insomnia, the worry, and so forth do not fit most heavenly visions.
If indifference to what occurs on our planet is characteristic of the afterworld, I doubt we would recognize celestial inhabitants as similar to their earthly incarnations. Moreover, I imagine one would be so transformed in conveyance to heaven as to have difficulty recognizing oneself.
A change of that sort might point to a different explanation of how heavenly life would be untroubled among deceased Christian parents who hold on to the attachment to their kids past the death that usually precedes that of their child. Romans 8: 28 offers these words:
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.
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After Life is an intriguing Japanese movie from 1998. Recently, deceased countrymen assemble at a transit station to the “beyond.” Each is given several days to decide on their version of eternity. They would then live forever in whatever brief interval they choose from their just-ended time on Earth.
The wayfarers are assigned a counselor to assist them in choosing. To live “in the moment,” that is, a particular moment forever, necessitates relinquishing the ability to think back and remember the past, as well as gaze forward and anticipate the future.
Experiencing the most precious happening one can recall involves sensations and feelings attached only to a sliver of time. The dead then would no longer have access to thought, analysis, worry, reflection, or concentration on other things, including positive experiences and events.
Because of that limitation on their future, the people in the waystation struggle with giving up all other recollections and relationships in return for eternity within a single juncture in time with a singular focus.
From the outside, once past the choice point, eternal bliss sounds like a heaven worth wishing for, assuming one chose a joyous, exciting, or touching event from one’s life. It also raises an interesting question: What moment would one choose?
Another possible future after death might be to reside beside a righteous, all-knowing, all-mighty being so dazzling as to render all imperfections and doubts mute, allowing us to share in his glory and shining presence.
Yet most of us fear our ending, the act of dying, or both. Why?
Shakespeare’s Hamlet fears a terrifying afterlife. As you learned in school, his famous soliloquy begins, “To be or not to be …” Hamlet is considering whether to kill himself: “not to be.” The King of Denmark, his father, has been murdered, and his mother unwittingly married the murderer, his uncle.
At first, this young man imagines a post-worldly existence consisting of eternal, restful sleep. But what of the possible nightmares, the Prince of Denmark wonders?
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. …
Another film on life and the afterlife is Defending Your Life. Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep star as two forty-something deceased yuppies who meet in a beautiful metropolis after expiring, a place of ease for those who have just departed life. In a few days, they fall in love.
During their stay in Judgement City, as their temporary location is called, they are subjected to a three-person tribunal determining whether they will go to a higher level of existence, something like heaven.
Streep’s character was a heroic, generous, and loving woman in her lifetime. A better future seems certain for her. For the Brooks persona, however, things aren’t looking up. He never overcame his many fears and always played it safe. As a result, he risks being returned to his home planet, never again embracing the woman he loves. The future remains in doubt.
No spoilers. The story is a funny, entertaining, and wise take on the need to grow in wisdom and courage throughout our lives: to be brave in facing whatever comes.
Next stop, Judgement City? Not too soon, I hope.
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The top image is Stratoculuili from German Wikipedia, September 2004 by de: Benutzer. Living Shadow.
It is followed by four glorious 2022 photographs by Laura Hedien with her kind permission: Laura Hedien Official Website. The first two are pictures of the Sunset in the Italian Dolomites. Next comes a Great Plains Summertime Sunset and, finally, an Italian Dolomites Sunrise.
