Do you believe in life after death? > Reviews (650)

My brother died when I was 17. He was 7. He'd battled with cancer since the week before his 3rd birthday. We saved up and bought him a postman pat mug and plate. He wasn't allowed them in his isolation unit at the hospital, but loved them once he got back home. He always found something to giggle over, and his smile would crack the face of the heavens open with light and joy and brightness.

He died at home, in his wee makeshift bed in mum and dad's room. Cosy, warm, with mum and dad holding him. When we went in the next morning, he looked just like he was sleeping. We said so. Very pale and peaceful. We were very brave, the perfect model of dignity, everyone said so. Even though our insides were broken up into so many tiny fragments we had no idea how we'd ever fix them all back together. He was buried with his teddies, in his red socks and his blue "I'm the Boss" tracksuit. And everyone came, so many people, hundreds. To say goodbye.

Dad was different. His was not an easy, slipping away sort of death. He clung to life as hard as he could, found it more difficult to just let go. He was buried to a huge turnout, everyone there to pay their respects to a good man, a family man, so kind, so honest. It was my 22nd birthday, and when we lined up outside the church to thank people for coming, people hugged me, said how sorry they were, and happy birthday.

I could not imagine not seeing them again. My dad, my brother. Even now, all these years later, I miss them.

Life after death.

People talk about it all the time, as though maybe there is a special flowery place somewhere up in the clouds that you float up towards when your' body stops working and your heart gives up. And we don't know, do we? Maybe there is a great marshmallow in the sky waiting for me to snuggle down in to when these old bones have given up the ghost.

It's one of life's great mysteries, and I think, at the end of it all, all anyone can have is an opinon. A feeling, perhaps. A notion of what comes next.

There are of course all those people who have had near death/reincarnation experiences, who have seen their grandmother, the one that died before they were born, walking down the stairs of thier student accomodation one crisp Easter week. The mothers who have heard their dead children calling out to them, reassuring them, saying it's all okay mum, everything is fine. The hand on the shoulder, the smell on a bus of tobacco, wrigleys spearmint gum, and imperial leather soap, a smell that could only be one person, one dead and gone person. The stories don't stop, there are hundreds of them to tell - almost everyone has them, don't they?

I watched on TV a few weeks ago of a little Scottish boy of maybe 4 years, who could remember his "Bara Mum" - and a family he had been part of on the Scottish Island of Bara years ago. Years before he was even born.

We all have our stories, you'll have them - I know you do. Of loved ones who we "see" again, or hear, or catch a glimpse of out of the corner of our eyes on a busy high street in the summer warmth of May, or a dark cold of a grey February morning.

Do people just see what they want to see? Or is it real? Will we ever know?

We all have our stories of what happened, what it was like to watch someone taking their last breath, closing their eyes for the last time on a silent world. And when we think of those stories, the people, the ache, we know what we want. We want what we cannot have. We want them back. Or we want to be rid of the guilt that we feel for NOT wanting them back to go through it all again, the pain, their suffering, ours.

I think, for many people, the idea of there being something else, beyond this life, this here and now, is a way of holding on to the feeling that maybe the person who has died is still around, looking out for them, listening to them, understanding their whys and their wherefores. Taking care of them from some faraway place that's actually incredibly close.

Sometimes, when you've lost someone, it's simpler than all that, it's only that there's a deep longing to see them again, to make sure that wherever they are, they're okay, they're safe, they're happy. We want them to know that we miss them, we loved them, we're sorry. We have to believe that they are somewhere, and not just in a hole in the ground. Having something to pin those beliefs to, those warm, comforting beliefs, helps us, when we need it to.

But then you come to the idea that if something stays, if the spirit of a person "goes" somewhere, then it can come back too. I find this part hard to deal with, especially when it comes to mediums and spirit healers. The idea of a person who is quietly at rest being summoned to provide lottery numbers or the secret hiding place of Great Grannies secret horde of cash, is a little beyond my liking. I don't like the idea of dad or my little brother being summoned from whatever slumber they're in simply to satisfy my need for comfort, or reassurance. I don't need that any more, I don't think.

If the people I love are still around, still with me, I'd rather think that perhaps it's simply in the memories I have of them, rather than some tangible, smoke-like presence. That maybe the dreams I have of them, where I wake up in the morning feeling like I've spent time with them, perhaps is just my minds' way of dealing with the loss that never really goes away, that just becomes softer round the edges, and not so prickly to carry around every hour of every day. Perhaps we create the ideas that help us live each day as it comes. Perhaps across the centuries, people have built their faith and their ideaology around the belief that life does, actually, go on forever. A way, perhaps of dealing with our own mortality, convincing ourselves, we're actually, no really, actually immortal.

We will all know one day. We just won't be able to tell anyone about it. Pity, that.

Guess we'd all better just live for now, and make our heavens here, where it counts. The dead are gone - we don't love them any less for all that, but they're gone, and what matters, what counts, is what we make of ourselves, our life, our breathing in and breathing out. In and out. In and out.

Thanks for reading, Kate x