Death Comes

Siem has been having a rough time of it, trying to come to terms with this, to absorb the fact of his son's death. This young life, so full of promise, cut off so abruptly, so quickly, without any warning. He feels betrayed and abandoned, to have the slowly developing partner-son relationship with his oldest boy summarily terminated. And all the spent care and nurturing, all the guiding and counseling, all the built up hopes and happy pride - all gone! All wasted!

He wishes they could have had some parting talks, to straighten out any misunderstandings that might have been. No one is ever prepared. A sudden death shakes up one's whole world, shocks one with a sense of inexplicable doom. Who ever knows what lies in the future?

He tosses and turns in bed that evening, unable to sleep. Marie complains several times.

At last he dozes off.

/// "Hello, Siem." He is startled. He's sitting on a warm rock in a bright sunlit clearing, overlooking a brown-green valley down below, with a silvery meandering stream defining outlining the rounded russet masses of maples along its banks. There are no roads or houses or any signs of humanity. On another rock in front of him is the young girl who spoke to him just now. With a quick appraising glance he says "Hello. Who are you? And where am I?" She's a cheery young thing, with sparkling blue eyes and bouncy blonde curls. She's wearing a light brown dress, very plain, gathered at the waist with a yellow sash. And on her feet a pair of simple dark brown sandals. "I am Sharon. We're sitting on a hill top. I don't know what it's called. It's a good place to have a nice quiet conversation." "This isn't Heaven, is it? I didn't die or anything?" With a tinkling laugh, "No, no. You did not die. Don't worry, you'll be fine. After we talk a bit you'll go back to where you were. You'll wake up, and if you remember anything, it will seem like a dream. That's all." "Is that what dreams are? What this is? Is this a dream? Am I dreaming you?" "You are not dreaming me. That is, you are not creating me in your dreaming. But you are dreaming, even so. Sort of. It's kind of complicated. Dreaming covers so many different situations, you see. You can have all kinds of experiences while your body is sleeping. I guess they all come under the heading of dreaming, from your point of view. Try to think of it this way. You're familiar with the idea that people have a body and a soul. Well, the body can be in bed, sleeping, and the soul, or at least a part of you that we can call the soul for simplicity's sake, the soul can leave. It can leave to learn lessons, either directly or by way of some sort of illustrative-symbolic drama, or just by seeing some happening or situation. To help you to understand or deal with something that troubles you. Do you see what I mean?" Frowning, "I think so." "So quite often you do not create your dreams, nor the beings that appear in them. What seems like creating comes from the way in which, as you remember or partly remember what happened, you try to make sense of it by superimposing your more familiar concepts on it. And that can be especially confusing when your experience involves witnessing something far removed in time from your present. Your linear thinking imposes a sequential order on material that is not necessarily in any sort of time sequence. The events or scenes you enter as observer can be back in time, or forward in time; they're not restricted the way your conscious living is, to the present point that seems to move ephemerally from past to future. So, you re-create your experience in keeping with your beliefs, and the result is what you think of as a dream." She's an attractive young thing, barely out of her teens, and Siem has a hard time concentrating on what she's saying; her soft lithe body draws his gaze like a magnet. "Siem." "Yes! Ahhh. Right. But how can you know all this? You're just a young girl. Aren't you?" "Yes and no. That doesn't really matter, does it? Does my age make any difference? Are you going to let my age determine or affect the significance of what I say to you? …Or my looks?" Siem is embarrassed. Fixing his eyes on the rocks around them, he says, slowly, "I am sorry. Please go on." "Right. I suppose you're wondering why we're here?" "Yes, of course." "Okay. Tell me, what do you think it will be like when you die, yourself. What will happen to you?" "Well, as far as I understand, I will either go to Heaven, to Hell, or to Purgatory, depending on the state of my soul when the time comes." "That is an oversimplification. A way to make complicated things simpler for people who are not yet ready to know more. I would like to tell you more, so that losing Victor may be less traumatic for you." "You know about Victor? How do you know that?" "Yes. As I just said, helping you deal with Victor's death is in good part the reason for my being here with you. The mechanics of my coming to know what is troubling you are not really important. Not to you, not now. I know about you so I may help you. Alright?" "Alright." "Now, I think it's very sad that even people in your situation, who believe that dying is a transition to a better state, or say that they so believe, still act as if dying is a curse, a final parting, a theft or deprivation. And you react to Victor's death as if God took something from you. As to yourself, in spite of your conviction that as a reasonably good person you would go to Heaven if you died in, as you would put it, a state of grace, you still fear death as if it were some terrible and unfair imposition." "Well. That doesn't seem unreasonable! When you die you leave all your family, your friends, your whole life, behind you. They never see you again, and they don't know what happened to you. It's a disappearance behind a blank wall. Poof! Gone. Just like that. Of course it's unfair, especially when it happens to a young person like Victor, who had his whole life to live yet, and is just cut off before he even has a chance to get started. You don't think that's unfair? How can God allow that? What sort of God would allow that? Isn't God supposed to be good and loving?" "Oh, Siem. This comes close to blasphemy. How can you carry on like this, like a spoiled child. Now, listen carefully. No, just get hold of yourself and listen to me. I'm going to try to explain to you how it looks from the other side. Okay? Take it easy, and just listen. In all His perfect loving goodness God has created this wonderful world for you people to live in. He has provided you with everything you need to live beautiful constructive lives, to become good and loving persons, to move and breathe and grow in freedom and knowledge and wisdom… Now, how can you take that so lightly? How can you claim all that, as some sort of right? As something you're entitled to? Who or what would you BE without Him, without what He has given you? And how, in God's name, can you possibly presume to question the way He runs things? Yes. Life can be hard. You may be knocked about from time to time. You bear the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, so to speak. But can't you see that all of that comes as part of a greater plan? You cannot learn life's lessons without experiencing them! You cannot grow without adversity. To become more than what you are now, you HAVE to endure more than you, as you now are, can bear! Don't you see? Suffering is part of growing. Do not question God! And suppose you tell me. Do you have a better idea? No, never mind. Let me continue. Okay. Let's have a calm look at losing Victor, shall we? A good part of the problem here, is in that over-simplified account of what happens at death. I tell you again: Death is primarily NOT an ending but a beginning. I know, I know, that sounds weird to you, but it's a question of perspective, and to understand all this you have to change your perspective, you HAVE to. There is no other way. When a human being dies, one of two things happens. If he has had a full life, and has experienced in good measure all of the normal human situations and learned from them as was intended, he will proceed in time, to his next life experience on another world, closer to his eventual destination, first in the direction of the headquarters of his superuniverse, and later in other living sojourns, ever closer to Paradise. Now please realize that these experiences are not lives as you know them. Your time on earth is the only three dimensional life experience you will have, and you have not had any other before this one. So you are not reincarnated, you see. Later you will have, to put it simply, more spiritual forms. Okay? Now, if someone is cut off before his time, as happened with Victor, he resumes his present adventure on the Mansion worlds, and that's a special arrangement to allow him to complete his earth education, you might say. If he did not marry on earth, he will marry there. If he did not experience and learn from parenting on earth, he will have that opportunity there. And so on. So he will have it all. He will suffer it all. He will be denied nothing from having died too young. You see? Do you understand now? He will not lose out." Frowning, Siem says "Is that Purgatory? Or is the other case Purgatory? And what about Heaven and Hell?" "Good questions. If we have to use those terms, I would say that the Mansion world experiences are more like Purgatory. And being in Heaven would be the eventual attainment of the vision of God on Paradise, but that is unbelievably far away. Almost impossible for the human mind to contemplate. It is far away in space, although the concept of space almost loses its meaning as one approaches Paradise. And it is far, far away in time, both as time that is required to travel there and as time needed to successively 'grow there' through all those incremental experiences on other worlds." "We don't just go to Heaven." "Certainly not. Do you think you would be ready for that?" "I don't feel ready for anything, not even this life." "A healthy attitude. No, you don't GO to Heaven; it's more like you GROW to Heaven. It's all so much more wonderful and so much grander than people generally realize." "So, what about Hell?" "Oh, yes. No such place, sorry. What would compare with your beliefs about Hell is extinction." "Extinction? Like extinct species?" "Something like that, but more thorough, more complete. When a person is absolutely evil, has become so wicked that he is beyond hope of redemption, when he has spurned all attempts to set him on the right path and has irrevocably denied God, he is then judged, and if that assessment is confirmed, he is extinguished utterly. It would be as if he had never been; he is totally eradicated. If you are not worthy, you will not be. Simple as that." "No everlasting punishment, no hell fire." "Think about it, Siem. Would you do that to anyone?" "No, I hope not." "Right. So why should you think God would be less good, less 'human', than you are?" "Doesn't infinite sin call for infinite punishment?" "Do you think a person suffering forever would measure up to the offence? Do you think betraying God could be set right by any amount of suffering on the part of a pathetic human being? The very notion makes God look like a petty tyrant." "I suppose so." "I have to go now, Siem. Okay? And please try to keep some perspective on Victor's death." "I will try." \\\ Siem wakes up, feeling cool and refreshed. He is trying to remember something about a dream. There was a very pretty young girl. Wonder what happened.