“It’s amazing, Molly … the love that is inside, you take it with you.”
– Patrick Swayze’s character, Sam, to Demi Moore’s character, Molly, in Ghost
Do you believe in some kind of life after death?
CS Lewis once said that he was never in doubt about people who survived death, but when his wife died, he was no longer sure. Why? Because it was very important to him that she was alive.
When it comes to the belief in the possibility of some kind of life after death, that is, the soul / spirit / essence / consciousness of a deceased person living in some way after the death of their body, CS Lewis puts it. put it this way (as recounted by Anthony de Mello in his book, Awareness; The Perils and Opportunities of Reality):
“It is like a rope. Someone says to you, ‘Would this hold the weight of one hundred and twenty pounds?’
You answer: “Yes.”
‘Well, let’s leave your best friend on this rope.’
Then you say, ‘Wait a minute, let me try that string again.’
You’re not so sure now. “
In other words, before losing someone close and dear to us, the possibility of some kind of life after death may not be so important. In theory, we can believe it or not.
Sure, it’s an interesting concept to think about, read, watch movies and plays, and discuss, but if all of our loved ones are still here with us, then what happens after they die isn’t usually too high in our minds. Radar. of things to worry about.
But when we LOSE a loved one, oh my … now we’re worried! I mean, where the hell did they go, their essence?
Or is he really dead … dead? When the body dies, is it really the end?
If you’ve experienced the loss of a loved one, you may have found yourself asking these kinds of questions.
I certainly did after my husband, John, died suddenly at the age of 32.
But here’s the thing: what I experienced right after his death is, in hindsight, pretty incredible in terms of evidence to support the possibility that something is still alive after the death of our bodies.
I was able to spend the last day of John’s life with him in the ICU, holding his hand and comforting him to the best of my ability as the medical team prepared his body for organ removal.
Shortly after midnight, an operating room opened. I watched as a group of nurses and technicians prepared his body for the transfer. One person temporarily removed him from the respirator while another manually forced air into his lungs through a device that looked like a plunger. I wanted to scream. He was leaving me and there was nothing I could do about it.
They took John from his room and carried him down the hall. I followed behind, straight to the operating room. When I turned around and saw that several family members had followed us, I yelled, “Get out! Leave us alone!”
The medical staff stared at me. But my team of supporters took him out of the operating room. I walked over to John, leaned in, and kissed him on the lips.
“I love you,” I told him.
Then I took a deep breath, gave him one last hello, turned around, and walked out into the hall full of family and friends. Then I went home to start my life as a 32-year-old widow.
But then something amazing happened. I woke up the next morning at 5:30 a.m. and saw a big reddish-orange light framing my entire bedroom window. When the organ harvesting coordinator called me a few hours later to inform me of what John’s organs could be donated (heart, kidneys, and pancreatic islets), I asked him if he knew what time John’s heart was removed.
I could hear her flipping through her notes on the other end of the line.
“Here it is,” he said. “His heart was removed at 5:30 this morning.”
Wow!
In fact, I saw that red light two more times in the months after John’s death – once in my room again, but floating on the nightstand right next to my head, which freaked me out.
But then, as the years went by, I no longer saw the red light. Rather, I saw a white light.
In fact, it wasn’t even me who saw the white light one night above my head about three years after John’s death. I was a rustic retreat on Bragg Creek and there were several women staying in a room with bunk beds. I had slept in an upper bunk and when I woke up the next morning, the woman on the lower bunk, diagonally from me, asked how I had slept.
“Good,” I said.
“Oh,” she said. “Well, I woke up in the middle of the night and saw that the reading light above your head was on, so I thought you couldn’t sleep.”
Bewildered, I looked over my head and then back at the woman.
“There is no reading light here,” I said.
“Well,” was his reply, “there was a kind of white light over your head in the middle of the night.”
In light of everything I have experienced since John’s death, I strongly suspect that something is still alive after the death of our bodies. Interesting is the fact that some kind of light is often seen after a person’s death.
In John’s case, it makes sense that his light was red at first because I highly doubt his soul was at peace, having been caught so suddenly in the prime of life.
Whereas, as time went by, I think his soul found peace with his sudden death, which perhaps explains why he then appeared as a white light.
“Your soul is that part of you that is immortal,” writes Gary Zukov, in his book, The Seat of the Soul. “Love is the energy of the soul … but love is not a passive state. It is an active force. It is the force of the soul. Love does more than bring peace where there is conflict … it brings Light.”
I saw the movie, Ghost, the other night. I hadn’t seen him in years. This time, however, I didn’t find him heartbreakingly sad.
Rather, I was intrigued by the way the movie approached the subject of life after death … and found that much of what the characters experienced eerily similar to what I personally have experienced over the years. , including the white light at the end, when Patrick Swayze’s soul was finally at peace and he could move on.