The Death Community

You might wonder what happens after you die, many people most likely do. Although I tend to keep my thoughts focused on what happens while you are alive. We exist within communities, in families, in societies, and being alone at times does not sever that link necessarily. Your brain, or even perhaps your soul, is constantly taking things in from the outside world, even if you are stuck inside, and I don’t mean stuck inside due to a global pandemic or a certain or perceived danger that might await you outside. I am referring, rather, to the fact of being stuck within your own thoughts, your own sense of individuality that perhaps does not even exist.

Certainly not in the way you think it does. This is the kind of shit you find out when you die. These little secrets reveal themselves to be not secrets at all. They were there right in front of your face the whole time. Sometimes, the living can attain this enlightenment while they are still breathing, either through hypnosis, or spiritual ceremony, or mind altering drugs, but usually, for the rest of us, we have to wait until we die, and that’s when we figure it out.  Too late, you think? Not at all.

As the dearly departed have discovered, there is a lot of time to mull these things over and work it all out after you are dead and gone. And not individually either, as previously stated regarding life, but, rather, within the death community, the social fabric of all the others who have passed on. They tell us, from beyond, that it’s not just humans either, but all the creatures who have died. Any and all are welcome into this post-life meet and greet.

Neither heavenly nor infernal, it resembles nothing more than a large salon, a big empty room, almost like a warehouse, or a big box store. At least that’s the impression one has upon dying, according to what we’ve been told. As stated, all the creatures of the Earth are there but they tend not to interact with the humans who are gently yet firmly pushed away into the rear of the space behind a sort of dividing wall made up of bones and discarded truck tires.

Now, perhaps, one big question we all have at this point is, does it matter who we get buried next to? When we awake to find ourselves in the warehouse, only an illusion by the way, are we in fact next to the person as in the graveyard? 

For instance, Aunt Bernice really insisted on being buried next to her late husband and had bought the plot next to his soon after he passed away. She even had her own tombstone made at the same time, only the expiration date was missing, to be carved in later. And Bernice was doing this because she is sure that by lying in proximity, in the cemetery, they will thus be together in the afterlife. But guess what happened? She died and he wasn’t around.

It was like she woke up in Aisle 12 and her late husband was somewhere in Aisle 97 or perhaps outside in the garden section, because yes, the afterlife can seem like being in a giant home improvement store with a series of escalators in the middle and an angelic figure playing the piano, but not church hymns or sacred choral music or anything like that. In fact, you can put in requests and the piano angel will play anything.

We’ve heard, from the beyond, that there is even karaoke but Bernice did not know that yet as she was just arrived at the time. Searching for her late husband, she instinctively reached for the phone to text him, but then realized she was, in fact, deceased and no longer had a phone, or even a body. She was just a spirit, among the other spirits at the giant warehouse in the sky or in the ground or wherever they were. Well, Bernice thought, if I am not here next to my late husband, who am I here with?

She turned and introduced herself to the spirit on her left, who apparently was hard of hearing and kept saying “What,? What’s that? Can you speak up?” Exasperated, Bernice, still trying to get oriented, turned and tried to introduce herself to the spirit on her right. She felt something familiar, the vibe was there, a connection, and she remembered back to her childhood and memories she thought had been long forgotten; Being nursed, taking a bath, falling on the sidewalk and scraping her knee, the smell of the juniper trees outside her nursery, eating lunch and taking a nap at her daycare, fighting with a boy in kindergarten class on the big rug with colored letters and numbers on it.

“Mom?” she asked the spirit on the left.  “What is it, honey?” the spirit replied.

Bernice took a deep breath she felt a non-existent tear form in her non-existent eye.

“Are you really my Mom?” Bernice whispered.
“No, honey.” We are no longer mothers and daughters.  We are merely wind and vibrations.”

“But, the memories.” Bernice gasped.

“That’s just the beginning.” The disembodied voice declared. “Your childhood memories will all come back. Then your toddlerhood, adolescence, adulthood, even stuff you don’t remember happening, or have never thought of. You will have plenty of time to take it all in and reflect upon your experience.”

After a long pause, Bernice asked, “Do you know where my husband is?”

Bernice heard the voice on the other side of her reply.

“What,? What’s that? Can you speak up?”

She shushed him curtly.

“In time you may find him.” The motherly voice replied.

“There is no rush. Once you have put all the pieces together, and realize the main crux of your pre-death existence, the one or two, three max, situations that kept presenting themselves to you over and over again, though in different forms, throughout your whole entire life, unbeknownst to you at the time. Once you figure these things out, and the memories will help you, then you can make your way to the check-out line.”

As we know now, from the information we have received from the beyond, this whole experience of reflection and revelation, will most likely take hundreds of years, in Earth time. We don’t know how long that seems up there, or down there, over there, wherever this place may be, if it can even be called a place at all. Once the process is complete you can begin to move toward the check out line, which takes another hundred years or so.  It’s crowded.

Once you reach the terminus, you see that there is no self check-out, thank God. Nor are there any cashiers. No scanners. No annoying, repetitive beeping noises. No scales, conveyor belts or bags. The check-out appears, rather, as a pinkish-purplish swirl of gases, and once it’s your turn, you pass into the ether and you’re gone. Perhaps you are reborn. Perhaps you pass along to the next chamber, the next level of Nirvana, Hell, what have you. Perhaps you are at last reunited with your spouse. Or your best friend, your worst enemy, your pet. A stranger. No one knows.