Is There Life After Death?

 

Is There Life After Death?

September 18, 2020

 

I have long insisted that all human knowledge is based exclusively on experience. Experience is all we have. Because of how was are formed as centered selves who perceive and think about a world that appears to us to exist outside of us but which we cannot objectively prove exists outside of us, experience is all we can have. I have also insisted that I am an agnostic about life after death. I know neither that there is such a thing nor that there isn’t such a thing. I don’t believe that anyone can know if there is such a thing because no one has ever truly experienced death (as opposed to having what are called near death experiences), then come back to tell us about what is or isn’t there. Of course, if there is no life after death that could never happen even in theory because there would be no “one” to come back. Yet even if there is life after death, no one has ever done that. Indeed, even if someone appeared to us, even someone we know has died, and told us something about life after death all we would know is that we perceived someone doing that. Every analysis of human knowledge does and must come down at the same place. All we know is what we have experienced, and all we really know about that is that we experienced it. Descartes said I think therefore I am. I say I experience therefore I know.

That being said and sincerely believed, I have had in my life two strong experiences of someone I know has died appear to me. In both cases it was my late wife Francie. She died of cancer on the evening of July 31, 2002. I was with her when she passed. Our children and I had her body cremated. We buried her ashes in a cemetery plot where one day my ashes will be buried too. Francie died. Her death was the greatest loss of my life. It was if anything a bigger loss in our children’s lives. There simply is no doubt about what happened.

About ten months or so after Francie’s death I was attending the Annual Meeting of the Pacific Northwest Conference of the United Church of Christ, in which I hold ordained ministerial standing. Some people from one of the churches of the Conference brought a portable labyrinth to the meeting, a piece of carpet really with a classic Chartres-style labyrinth printed on it. I started to walk the labyrinth, something I haven’t done often but which I know can be a powerful spiritual experience. I know deep in my bones that Francie walked that labyrinth with me. I don’t know how I know. I didn’t see her with my eyes, I felt her in my soul. I experienced her walking the labyrinth with me. It wasn’t an ordinary sensory experience, but I had no doubt that she was there. Today I have at least no doubt that I experienced her being there. That experience wasn’t eerie or frightening. It was calming and reassuring. We just walked silently together as we might have done during her life. That evening in 2003 I experienced someone who had died being present with me in a spiritual way in this life.

Francie and I had a dog, an Irish Terrier named Jake. We had gotten him about four years before Francie died. In 2011 his kidneys began to fail. On September 12, 2011, I was driving to the vet clinic where Jake already was to have him put down. I was devastated. Jake had been my friend and companion through so much. Now his life would end. It was the right thing to do, but it hurt like bloody hell. I was an emotional wreck. As I drove Francie appeared to me. This time it was almost like I could see her physically. She was just in front of me, a little higher than my head and a little to my left. She spoke. She said, “It’s OK. I’m here waiting for him.” Then she was gone. Again all I know is what I experienced. My conscious mind didn’t create that experience. It had never occurred to me to think of Jake’s death that way. I don’t know that I felt surprised exactly by what I experienced, but I know I didn’t just consciously fantasize about Francie appearing and saying that to me. I didn’t make the experience up. It just happened. I experienced Francie appearing and saying those words to me.

Were those experiences of Francie appearing to me real? It depends on what you mean by real. They were real to me because I experienced them. Do they have any objective reality beyond that? I don’t know. I can’t know. They do not prove to me in any objective way that something that is recognizably Francie lives beyond the grave. Yet I guess that as a man of faith I must say that those experiences give me hope that something that is recognizably us survives our death. Certainly an awful lot of people believe that to be true. Both orthodox Christianity and orthodox Islam insist that it is true. I have experienced other people believing it. Once years ago I walked into a hospital room as a parishioner of mine took her last breath. A nurse who was present pointed up to a corner of the room at the ceiling and said, “There she is. Right there.” I didn’t see her there, but I guess that nurse did. I’ve heard many stories of phenomena like that. Do they prove the reality of life after death? Not to me they don’t. I’ll just say again what I said before. They give me hope. I can live with that hope. It’s the best I can do, and it is enough.