Things to think about ....

[libby]

I have a lot of books. Have been going through some recently to try to weed out some I'll probably never read, but it's hard, because I pick up a book and it falls open to a page with something I've underlined, so I put it aside .... The following is from one of those books:

"I have already written about the desirability of cultivating flexibility of the body, by stretching or doing yoga, for instance. The more physically flexible you are, the less  you will be bothered by the routine aches and pains of aging and the less likely you will be to suffer serious injury if you fall. There is an analogous quality of flexibility of the mind that can protect you from being thrown off balance by the changes of growing older.

"Here is an example of what I mean. The older you get, the more likely you are to experience loss: loss of parents, of family, of friends, of mates, of companion animals, of youth and youthful attractiveness, of sensory acuity, of independence, of body functions, possibly even of body parts. Any loss can remind you of all loss, plunging you into grief and despair. But recall the fundamental teaching of Epictetus: "The thing that upsets people is not what happens but what they think it means. He is pointing to a truth of highest importance: we have a choice as to how we interpret our experience, as to what meaning we assign to it." -- Andrew Weil, M.D. Healthy Aging.

I can think of one response right off. People who believe that we will meet again after death, either in Heaven or in another life (reincarnation), or ? .... will most likely suffer less when a loved one passes away.

[libby]

... and speaking of reincarnation, here's one of my favorite bits of poetry:

Sudden Light

I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell;
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
You have been mine before. --
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall, -- I knew it all of yore.

--  Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828 -- 1882, British Painter and Poet

[libby]

"Death is life on another frequency. The music doesn't end just because someone can't hear it."
Deepak Chopra

I find that a fascinating concept. Religion aside, just imagine ...

[Palehorse]

"Death is life on another frequency. The music doesn't end just because someone can't hear it."
Deepak Chopra

I find that a fascinating concept. Religion aside, just imagine ...

I think about that very thing quite often myself. Life = light, so it isn't much a stretch to imagine life (light) continuing on but on another "frequency". 

[libby]

I think about that very thing quite often myself. Life = light, so it isn't much a stretch to imagine life (light) continuing on but on another "frequency". 

I have several stories I could tell, not about me, about others, but I'm sleepy, so goodnight, pleasant dreams.

[The Troll]

 

  Being 76 I think of how little sand I have in my hour glass of life.  When it was full it didn't seem to move and now it is moving to fast.  I am not afraid to die, but I will hate to leave the ones I love.   

[libby]

  Being 76 I think of how little sand I have in my hour glass of life.  When it was full it didn't seem to move and now it is moving to fast.  I am not afraid to die, but I will hate to leave the ones I love.   

I think we all feel that way -- sooner or later. I like to think the body dies but (hope) the soul lives on. I knew three people who believed that. I'll tell you about one: he was a high school friend who went off to college and then joined the marines. We got reacquainted again years later at a reunion. He was by then a colonel, just retired from the marines. Said several years before he had a heart attack and died. As they worked on him in the emergency room, he saw the white light, and then was in a place, teaching, didn't remember what, but was very happy. Then he became aware of what was going on in the ER but didn't want to come back. Said the next time he didn't plan to come back. And he didn't.

[Palehorse]

I think we all feel that way -- sooner or later. I like to think the body dies but (hope) the soul lives on. I knew three people who believed that. I'll tell you about one: he was a high school friend who went off to college and then joined the marines. We got reacquainted again years later at a reunion. He was by then a colonel, just retired from the marines. Said several years before he had a heart attack and died. As they worked on him in the emergency room, he saw the white light, and then was in a place, teaching, didn't remember what, but was very happy. Then he became aware of what was going on in the ER but didn't want to come back. Said the next time he didn't plan to come back. And he didn't.

I've read several accounts of individuals that were "clinically dead" and brought back to life. None of them expressed a desire to return to this place, but all of them expressed the fact they were no longer fearful of death; instead looking forward to it.

I personally knew one individual that was also declared clinically dead for several minutes, and who was also brought back to life in this place. She told me a similar story to what you relate above, but the difference was she was being taught by those she loved in that place. She was so joyful, not to have been brought back, but to have had that experience. She then told me she also looked forward to death.

Unfortunately, she had a stroke that took her memories in the short term, and also took her wonderful personality. Diabetes took her legs and sight as well. She remembered nothing of her "death" experience and had the personality of a great white shark. Empty dark eyes replaced her once sparkling and fiery eyes, but she never stopped playing the piano; even as Alzheimers came for what was left of her cognizant self.

She struggled against death to the very last, lingering in a coma for months. . .

The doctors called her a "tank" because she refused to succumb to that which would have killed 99/100 others.

I called her Mother, and still do. 

It was only when she related her "death experience" to me, shortly after returning, that I gave credibility to those stories of the others I had read about.

Science says it is just the synapse firing in our dying brains that causes these "visions or experiences". But they cannot prove it. . .

[Purplelady1040]

I've read several accounts of individuals that were "clinically dead" and brought back to life. None of them expressed a desire to return to this place, but all of them expressed the fact they were no longer fearful of death; instead looking forward to it.

I personally knew one individual that was also declared clinically dead for several minutes, and who was also brought back to life in this place. She told me a similar story to what you relate above, but the difference was she was being taught by those she loved in that place. She was so joyful, not to have been brought back, but to have had that experience. She then told me she also looked forward to death.

Unfortunately, she had a stroke that took her memories in the short term, and also took her wonderful personality. Diabetes took her legs and sight as well. She remembered nothing of her "death" experience and had the personality of a great white shark. Empty dark eyes replaced her once sparkling and fiery eyes, but she never stopped playing the piano; even as Alzheimers came for what was left of her cognizant self.

She struggled against death to the very last, lingering in a coma for months. . .

The doctors called her a "tank" because she refused to succumb to that which would have killed 99/100 others.

I called her Mother, and still do. 

It was only when she related her "death experience" to me, shortly after returning, that I gave credibility to those stories of the others I had read about.

Science says it is just the synapse firing in our dying brains that causes these "visions or experiences". But they cannot prove it. . .

That is such a wonderful story!!! Thanks for sharing PH

[Anne]

When I worked at the hospital there were several people who were close to death and they would be talking to someone and when I would go into their room no one would be there. They would tell me they were just talking to their parent, sibling or some other person who had passed on. This happened to some members of my family, too. When I was sitting with my uncle a couple years ago as he was near the end of his life he was asleep (I thought) and talking. Then he looked at me and said Leslie (his daughter) and Shirley (my father) had been to see him. It was so good to talk to them again. My aunt told her daughter that Bitty (my granddaughter) kept telling her that she should come and see where she lived now. I know these are not the same as death experiences, but I think sometimes someone or something comes to ease the way, or to send you back because it isn't your time.

[libby]

When I worked at the hospital there were several people who were close to death and they would be talking to someone and when I would go into their room no one would be there. They would tell me they were just talking to their parent, sibling or some other person who had passed on. This happened to some members of my family, too. When I was sitting with my uncle a couple years ago as he was near the end of his life he was asleep (I thought) and talking. Then he looked at me and said Leslie (his daughter) and Shirley (my father) had been to see him. It was so good to talk to them again. My aunt told her daughter that Bitty (my granddaughter) kept telling her that she should come and see where she lived now. I know these are not the same as death experiences, but I think sometimes someone or something comes to ease the way, or to send you back because it isn't your time.

Anne, I have several stories like that. Here's one in the "isn't your time," category. I was working for an Internal Medicine group in Arlington. One of the doctors asked me to sit with a patient, keep her calm, while he finished up with another. She was an elderly woman, a sweet, elegant lady, who had lived in her parents' home in Falls Church all her life. She was obviously ill, but didn't complain. I was making small talk, trying to comfort her, when she said, "Libby, I'm not afraid of dying," and went on to tell me that when she was a girl, during the "great flu epidemic," she got it and was very sick. Her parents called the family doctor (she learned later), and he told them there was little he could do. All she remembered was that she was engulfed in a white light, talking to her grandmother, who had passed on years earlier. She said her grandmother held out her hand, and she was reaching for it when she had the thought that she would be leaving her parents  behind, so pulled back, didn't take her grandmother's hand. The next thing she remembered was opening her eyes and hearing the doctor say it looked like she was going to make it after all.

[Palehorse]

When I worked at the hospital there were several people who were close to death and they would be talking to someone and when I would go into their room no one would be there. They would tell me they were just talking to their parent, sibling or some other person who had passed on. This happened to some members of my family, too. When I was sitting with my uncle a couple years ago as he was near the end of his life he was asleep (I thought) and talking. Then he looked at me and said Leslie (his daughter) and Shirley (my father) had been to see him. It was so good to talk to them again. My aunt told her daughter that Bitty (my granddaughter) kept telling her that she should come and see where she lived now. I know these are not the same as death experiences, but I think sometimes someone or something comes to ease the way, or to send you back because it isn't your time.

It is my position that stories/experiences such as those you relate here, present support for my personal theory that life exists after death; just upon another "frequency" as stated within Libby's post.

I was with my grandfather just 40 days before he crossed over. He knew he was dying and that our time together then would be the last we shared in this place, and told me so. It was Thanksgiving, and my father and I had made the trip from Chicago specifically to spend the holiday with his parents, my grandparents. He had been seriously ill for the entire year, and had been sent home to the farm to die. My grandfather loved roses, and had huge beds of them planted everywhere on the farm, and that year we had a mild start to winter so there were many of his beds still blooming; especially the one right outside his bedroom window.

In the depth of winter, on New Years Day, my grandfather breathed his last. My mother and father were present at the moment of death, sitting just outside his bedroom. The roses had long since gone dormant by then, but mom and dad both told me of the overpowering smell of roses that swept through the house suddenly. It forced mom to get up out of her chair and go check on my grandfather; and he had passed.

The event shook my father to his very core, as you can imagine; and he told me he went outside to see if he could find roses anywhere. There wasn't a rosebud to be found anywhere on that farm. No flowers of any kind.

Both mom and dad said they believed it was grandfather's way of saying goodbye to them; a signal from him that he had passed. And it wasn't his last.

Grandmother swore he visited her all the time in spirit form, and was haunting her. She complained about it constantly to any of us that came to stay with her for a visit.
(Near the end of her own life many years later, she refused to step foot into her own house, or to spend the night within it. She claimed grandfather was coming to take her with him. Instead, she slept at my Aunt's home; where she crossed over herself).

Some years after grandfather's passing, when my mother was going through the event that caused her to have her "death experience", I took my children to the farm for the very first time. They had never been there before, and as father and I were walking them to the field that used to hold all of his bee-hives, both he and I stopped dead in our tracks as we smelled the distinct odor of Prince Albert tobacco.

Grandfather smoked Prince Albert his whole life, rolling his own cigarettes his entire life. Nobody was smoking, and yet both my father and I smelled it at the exact same moment, as we walked my children to that field. Later that night we spoke about it after the kids had gone to bed for the evening. Both of us had taken it as grandfathers signal to us that he was there to see his great-grandchildren on the farm for the first time.