Death is Part of Life

How can something so simple be so complex? At the end of life is death, sounds simple right? But what exactly is death? It is the end of life, but it is also the beginning of a journey into the afterlife. A Christian hopes it is the beginning of their journey into heaven. This is one thing that has never really been clear to me. What is death?

I’ve thought a lot about death in the past and have tried to understand what other religions believe happens after death. Christians believe that when you die you either go to heaven or hell, but I have struggled with this because it seems rather vague. What exactly happens when you get to heaven? From what I’ve learned, there are other religions that believe in reincarnation. This seems more appealing to me because leaving this world for good doesn’t make complete sense to me. And then there are the ancient Egyptians that believe in a complete afterlife. Now that is an interesting idea. What I’ve come to find out is that I don’t really know what I believe happens after death, and I probably never will.

I guess I’ll find out what happens after death when I die. Honestly, I’m a little nervous to feel death. I hope I don’t feel it at all. Dying in my sleep would be ideal. I think the main reason that people fear death is because they don’t know what to expect. They don’t know how it’s going to feel or what’s going to happen after they die. That is pretty scary. We just have to remember that there is no sense in worrying or fearing death because no matter what it’s going to happen eventually. There is no escaping it and fearing it is pretty pointless.

Now I should tell you why reincarnation sounds most appealing to me. I am a Christian, but reincarnation seems to be the only way that I can stay on this earth forever. How awesome does that sound? The earth is such a beautiful place and we’re lucky to live on it. And frankly, I’m not ready to leave it anytime soon and I can’t imagine ever having to leave it. One thing about reincarnation bothers me. When you are reincarnated you forget past lives, thus forgetting past lessons and essentially starting over. I don’t want to start over, I’m happy with the live I’m living and if living forever was an option I would say sign me up for that! But back to reality, living forever isn’t an option and to me reincarnation is as close as possible to that.

I hope that you’ve begun to think of death in a more complex way. Because death really isn’t as simple as we make it out to be. We have the “everyone dies, so what?” mentality and there’s actually much more to it. But it is true, everyone dies and that’s just how it is. I don’t have any answers as to why this is how it is, it just simply is. You can fear death and worry about it all you want, but in the end it will come whether you are ready or not. My hope is that when death comes to take me in my very old age in my sleep after my wife has died that I can go into whatever is after death with an open mind. I don’t know what to expect, but I hope that I’m ready when death finally comes to take me. And I hope that you are too. Death is inevitable and is part of life.

-Eric Proulx