a.m. and the afterlife

Some friends of mine lost their brother in law recently and I sent them the lyrics to Dan Fogelberg’s Netherlands (“from this rocky perch, I continue to search, for the wind and the snow and the sky…”). Knowing that they are agnostic, I thought maybe I had “gaffed” in implying some life after death experience and was over-thinking my intuitive response. This (as usual) occurred during an early morning walk in my yard with my dog, after a thunderstorm had just broken an intense heat wave. She was foraging around for apples in the grass and I could almost hear plants slurping leftover rain. A slight breeze animated the grape arbor vines.

These friends had often said that they thought, “After you go, that’s it. Cease to exist.” My response has always been, “Well I guess I won’t have the ability to be disappointed then.” But this morning the conversation in my head moved on for a moment, as the dog scampered after a tennis ball and then refused to pick it up because it was too wet. I answered, “How does one cease to exist? Exactly what form is ‘nothing’?” Is “nothing” wind, or earth, or rain? As our little consciousness joins the elements, does it move into some larger form—does it have the capacity to know things? This thought was fleeting, because, from the house, a bowl of chicken and sweet potato called to my dog and a cup of coffee called to me. It was only 7:00a.m. after all.