You will find short stories on this site. Most are autobiographical. Some are fiction.

A F T E R L I F E

I have breakfast with a group of older men on Wednesdays. The topics of our conversations bounce around. At one point it the conversation touched on notions of life after death. One of the men said that he believed in after-life because many people, who were resuscitated, have reported seeing bright lights, long lost family members, or childhood pets. I told them the story of Mr. Peterson, the owner of a fishing gear and bate shop in my home town Eugene Oregon. In 1946, when I was in the 4th grade, my friend, Mel Love, and I rode our bikes to Peterson’s Bate Shop for hooks and leader. It was a small shop off Franklin Boulevard, near the Willamette River. We found that the shop was closed. A piece of paper, taped to the door, explained “Closed due to illness”. Several weeks later, we needed fishing gear again, and were happy to find the shop was open. Mr Peterson was back behind the glass case displaying reels, and lures. Mr. Peterson looked pale and expressionless. He wasn’t the good-natured man we had known. I asked “Mr. Peterson, have you been sick?” He paused a moment before answering, “I have been dead.” Mel shot back, “What?” This was before it was common for resuscitation. Neither of us had heard of coming back from death. Then Mr. Peterson slowly explained that, while in the hospital, he had a heart attack and died. The doctors were able to bring him back to life. Mell and I stood there looking at each other in disbelief. After a brief pause, Mr. Peterson added “When you die there is nothing. Everything just goes black.” A couple of weeks later we learned that everything had gone black for Mr. Peterson again. Only this time there was no one to bring him back to life.

Hearing “When you die there is nothing. Everything just goes black.” from a man who had come back from death, was a profound experience for me. I had not thought much about death before then. This was my first knowledge of a person coming back from death. His experience of death was very different from stories of angles, heaven, and hell, which I had been described to me in Sunday School. Mr. Peterson’s experience was more plausible than those Christian explanations, which seemed to have a fairy-tail quality. I accepted Mr. Peterson’s explanation that death as simply beeing the end. My view has not changed much since. Over my many years, I have not encountered any contrary explanation that seemed more plausible. On the contrary the bright light and visions of loved ones, have been explained as a physical consequence of the brain death and as a kind of hallucination based on expectations.

It is said that events after death are unknowable. But are they? There is only one reason to believe that our death is any different from any other animal. That reason is encompassed by the term confirmation bias. We humans have a tendency to believe in what we hope for. Once men imagined that life after death could be a pleasant place, a happy hunting ground, or a heaven with angles and old friends, the belief took hold. Tribal shaman and preachers perpetuated such stories. A variety of these wishful concepts have come down through the ages to plague humanity with diverse and competitive religious beliefs.

The Christian faith has employed another aspect of human thought. It is our propensity to think of ourselves as being special. It is therefore satisfying, and therefore believable, to be told that we were created by God, in his image and separate from the other animals. Science has demonstrated how we humans evolved from other animals. We are just another species in the four billion year sequence of life on this planet. There is no credible reason to believe that our deaths are any different from that of other animals.

What is our existence anyway? Consider my existence in the mind of someone with whom I have had no influence, as far as they know, I don’t exist. In a very real sense, my existence depends on the image of me in other’s minds. It is their individual and collective understanding of who I am which constitute my existence while living as well as when I am dead. Is it our body which is so similar to all other humans or is it our mind which is unique among all of humanity. If it is our mind which constitutes our unique self, then it is either our inner self, which is not known to anyone else, or it is the image of us, as a unique individual, which resides in the minds of those who have known us. How does this concept of our existence being in the minds of others, color the concept of life after death? I will continue to exist, after death, much as I exist now in life because I will continue to exist in the minds of those whom I have influenced. In this sense, it is their individual and collective understanding of who I am, or who I was, that constitute my existence now, and after I am dead. There is only one image of myself which is extinguished upon my death. It is my own. This may not be a great loss because my view of myself is likely to be less accurate than the image that others have. My concept of me is colored by mental glorifications caused by my ego and wishful thinking. So my death is not the end of my existence. However it will come to an end gradually as memories of me fade, those who had known me die, and records of my having lived are lost.

There is also a material aspect of my belief in life after death. It has to do with soil. “Soil” in this context, includes all matter, gaseous or solid. It is the soil, both minerals and organic materials, of which we and all things, are composed. Like all other living creatures we are continually being remade throughout our lives, taking from the soil and giving back to it. Finally, it is the soil to which our bodies return when we die. Since the soil does not die, and since all life is made of soil, and because we all contribute to the soil while alive and afterward, we continue to live as part of the soil. Consistent with this concept of life and death, an individual life is part of a continuum. There is no beginning and no end to life.