Death and the Afterlife

It's been well over a year since I last had an entry in my blog. Two events have goaded me into action - the year anniversary of my good friend's death, and a comment by a reader, which reminded me that the occasional human does take a quixk glimpse at this blog every now and then. It doesn't exist in a vacuum, like I;ve thought before.
So, back to my friend, Wayne Leavitt. He died in his sleep, January 28, 2011. He was barely 62. I still don't know what happened - heart attack? Severe sleep apnia? He had a heart attack over a year before this, resulting in a triple bypass. His diet was abominable - he ate lots of pizza, and sat around in his easy chair, playing with his laptop. He had written an e-mail to me, just hours before he died. He was laughing and joking with his family before he went to bed and never woke up. Wayne wrote a lot of fantasy books, which his wife Nita collected and had bound professionally. It appears his son Grah will attempt to publish some of them in the near future. I hope he succeeds, although I never had the opportunity to read any of them.
Wayne died in Palmyra, NY, a short distance (a leisurely stroll, actually) from the birthplace of the Mormon religion. The Sacred Grove of Joseph Smith was practically Wayne's backyard. He and Nita moved to Palmyra the year before, to live in a "mother-in-law's+ house back of their daughter Aubrey's house, to be near her and the grandkids. They had lived in Las Vegas previously, for many years.
I attended his memorial in Las Vegas in February. It was odd for me. Seeing his siters for the first time in 35 years, talking to his younger brother Newell, who had been one of my good friends in high school, who I hadn't seen in nearly 40 years, plus a few more friends and/or rivals I hadn't seen in an equally long period of time, was unsettling in a way. Yes, I was very glad to see them again, and grateful I had the opportunity to attend, but everyone was now a tad "alien".
They had changed, I had changed, and that was to be expected. Every seven years, our body replaces all our cells, every seven years we become essentially a different person. That meant there had been five generations of cellular replacement. How can anyone expect to remain the same, after all that? Plus all the environmental factors impinging on said person.
Newel was extemely bitter about his brother's death, and seemed to vow vengeance upon a god who would do this to him and his brother. He felt completely bereft, and indeed, his brother had been a mainstay, a rock of Gibralter to Newell's tidal wave of a life. Newell had been an L.D.S. missionary, but was now an atheist, I guess. He had no hope of ever seeing Wayne again, and so his grief was tripled and almost palpable.
As for me, I was very sorry to see Wayne taken so early in life. We had had a lot of good times together, along with my friend Dever Langholf and my now brother-in-law Blaine Emms. It had been years since any of us had gotten together and done anything, but I still missed those days with them. But I was not stricken with grief. I knew I'd see him again. I believe the soul endures after death. I don't know how, I can't explain the mechanism of it, but it survives. I have my own little tale to tell regarding this.
In 2004, I had a quadruple bypass. I hadn't had a heart attack yet, but I was just about to have one. I had a hard recovery, especially after I developed blood poisoning. One morning, while it was still dark outside, I was startled into wakefulness when an image of my Grandma LaPrele appeared at the side of my bed. She appeared as I remembered her from my childhood, a plump, smiling woman with snow white hair, completely unlike the shriveled, empty husk I knew in my teenage years. I didn't hear her say anything, but I distinctly got the message she was transmitting - "Everything's alright, Robbie (a nickname I didn't particularly care for), everything will turn out fine." She smiled again, and slowly faded into complete transparency before my wondering eyes.
My daughter, Hannah, had a somewhat similar experience when she was but two years old. My first wife's mother had a sever heart attack, Kim got on a plane and flew nearly 3000 miles to Atlanta, to be at her side. Seconds afte she entered the hospital room, where other members of her family were gathered, her mother passed away. It was as if she had held on until Kim arrived. She died at midnight, on Halloween. I sometimes thought she was a witch, but not because of this - it was a culture clash between Yankee and Southern values.
Back in California, I got the bad news when Kim phoned me. I hadn't said a word, when Hannah went screaming down the halls, "Grandma's dead, Grandma's dead!"
How in the hell did she know that - I hadn't spoken a word? Later, me and all the kids were laying in our big waterbed with me, trying to console each other, when suddenly Hannah started screaming in terror. She pointed hysterically at the beroom door, and I kept asking her what was the matter? We finally got her to settle down, and she sobbed that she had seen Grandma standing by the bedroom door, basically saying good-bye to the rest of us. I do believe she really saw what she said she saw.
My wife Gloria has a most interesting twist on this. She, too, saw her Grandma after her death, buth this wasn't a one-time visit. Oh no, she appeared many times to Gloria over the years, especially during times of stress. She and Gloria would sit down and discuss matters, or she would console Gloria in times of trouble. After she married me, her grandmother no longer showed up - I guess having me around was sufficient compensation.
So no, I don't grieve terribly, like Newell, because I know something exists out there. I know, because uncounted thousands, perhaps millions, have "died" and returned to tell of a place that has remarkably consistent features. I don't believe it's merely a function of oxyen loss in the brain preceeding death, just like I don't believe UFOs are swamp gas. I feel the time for lame debunking of this sort is long past.
Most religions tell of an afterlife, although they seem remarkably divergent as to the nature and characteristics of the place. Sometimes I wonder if their prophets and seers really saw it, or just made up a description. Perhaps it is the witness phenomena, where at the scene of a crime, different witnesses have divergent testimonies as to the events or personalities of the perpetrators. Perhaps prophets from diffeent eras, with different backgrounds and experience, perceive the existance of the afterworld in radically different ways, because of that same phenomenon.
At any rate, I am tired of different religions battling each other for "truth" or supremacy. It exists, and we'll just have to wait to find out what it's really like. I admit I'm curious, though not in a hurry to do so.