The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times(55)

Little did I know this question about heaven would spark a final topic in our dialogue that was both profoundly mysterious and hopeful, especially as I was still grieving my father.

I had noticed that Jane sometimes had a slightly mischievous and knowing smile, like she had a secret. That was the smile I saw on her face now.





Jane’s Next Great Adventure



“Last year, during question time at the end of one of my lectures, a woman asked me, ‘What do you think your next great adventure will be?’ I thought for a bit and then I suddenly realized what it might be: ‘Dying,’ I said.

“There was a deathly hush, a few nervous titters, and then I said, ‘Well, when you die, there’s either nothing, in which case, fine, or there’s something. If there’s something, which I believe, what greater adventure can there be than finding out what it is?’

“Afterward the woman came up to me and said, ‘I never, ever wanted to think about dying, but thank you, because now I can think about it in a different way.’ And since then I’ve mentioned this in several lectures and there is always a very positive reaction. And by the way, I always make it perfectly clear that it is just the way I think about death, and that I certainly don’t expect everyone to feel the same way about it.”

I thought back to my dad’s illness and dying process, which was quite brutal as the cancer spread through his spine and brain.

“Do you think then that what people are scared of is illness—the process of dying—rather than actual death?” I asked.

“Oh yes,” said Jane. “It is worrying about what will cause our death, what horrible illness or dementia or being bedridden and utterly dependent on others—those are what we all fear. But death itself is something else entirely. My grandmother Danny, at the age of ninety-seven, was more or less confined to her bed after living through bronchial pneumonia. One night Mum went up with a bedtime cup of tea and found her reading the letters from her late husband—she always called him Boxer—who had been gone for over fifty years. Danny smiled and said, ‘I think you should write my obituary tonight, darling.’ The next morning when Mum went in, Danny was lying peacefully on the bed. Dead. On her chest were all Boxer’s letters, tied up in a red ribbon, with a note—‘Please send these with me on my last journey.’”

We were silent for a moment or two and I could see Jane’s eyes had teared up.

“Jane,” I continued gently, still wanting to explore death and the adventure ahead, “does this mean you believe in reincarnation?”

“So many different religions do believe in it,” Jane said thoughtfully. “The Buddhists believe that we can be reincarnated as animals—it depends on where we are on the path toward enlightenment. And, of course, both Hinduism and Buddhism believe in karma—if you suffer misfortune, you are paying for sins you did in a previous life.

“Honestly, I don’t know—but I sort of feel that if there truly is a reason for our being here on this planet, then surely we wouldn’t be given just one chance. When you think of eternity and our tiny little life span, it’d be awfully unfair! And you know,” she said, grinning, “I sometimes think that what’s happening in the world is just a test. Imagine Saint Peter at the gate to heaven getting out a computer printout of our time on Earth and checking to see if we used the gifts we were given at birth to try to do good!” Jane laughed.

I chuckled at Jane’s image of Saint Peter as the examiner evaluating how we did on our Earth experiment. I thought of my dad’s belief that life was a curriculum and also remembered the famous Jewish story about a Rabbi Zusha who was crying on his deathbed. When he was asked why he was crying, he said, “I know God is not going to ask me why I was not more like Moses or more like King David. He’s going to ask me why I was not more like Zusha. Then what will I say?” I loved this story because it was a reminder that each of our curriculums is unique and each of us is meant to do our part in our own special way. It was clear that Jane had thought a lot about these things, and she clearly believed that death was not the end.

“You know, before my father died, he thanked me for companioning him on what he called ‘his mighty journey to death,’” I said. “Like you, he definitely felt there was more to come.” I told Jane how my son and I would FaceTime with my dad in his hospital bed when I couldn’t be with him. Jesse said he would miss speaking to my dad through FaceTime. My dad said not to worry, after he was gone we could speak through SpaceTime.

Jane laughed at his play on words. “There’s that so important sense of humor in times of stress,” she said.

“What do you say to people who think there is nothing more?” I asked.

“Well, first of all, as I told you, I never try to force my beliefs onto anyone else. But I tell them some of the amazing stories about near-death experiences. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who did so much research on this subject, writes about a woman who was pronounced brain dead on the operating table before being resuscitated. When she came to, she described the movements of people whom she could not possibly have seen from her position on the operating table. She described how she looked down as she sort of hovered over the room.”

I told Jane about Bruce Greyson, who has been studying people who have had near-death experiences for forty years and has some pretty interesting stories of people who died and whose consciousness seemed to go on in some way, that consciousness itself seemed not to be limited to our brains.