Post-Mortem Lesson 5: What Is It Like?

This is one question I am quite fond of asking. What is it like to be in a particular situation? To be in a less fortunate state? To be confronted with your greatest fear? A good number of times I have been taken as a pessimist, one who looks at the worst possibilities, but for me it is one of my rather perverted means of being able to understand people and situations.

A week ago, I had an in-depth chat with a friend in Second Life. Like me, she has had her fair share of losses: her fiance died, and later on, her husband succumbed to cancer. It was an enriching conversation, to say to the least. She then gave me a link to a video clip. "I think you should watch this," she said in essence, "as this video might give you fresh insights on death from a scientific point of view."

The video in question is that of Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain researcher who herself had a stroke and was witness to her own body's gradual shutdown of functions. She has hence recovered and eventually travelled to give talks mainly on her recovery. I took the liberty of embedding the video. You may visit its source at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html.



Probably the most striking part in the video is when Jill narrated how the right half of her brain struggled with the left, affecting her perception of being "one" with her environment as against being "one", a solitary being. This is an experience where Jill is practically at the brink of death, and stories of people coming from a near-death experience are always very interesting and intriguing.

What is it like, indeed, to approach the end of your life? When you see a good number of people drop one by one like flies, you tend to start wondering yourself. I, for one, am not very religious, but I believe in a Higher Being, and I believe that when a person dies, his energy has to go somewhere. An energy converted to another, if I wish to be nerdy about this.

However, I see little point in being nerdy when it comes to people I care for who have left this physical world. Why rationalise [and hurt myself more in the process]? For me, they cannot be truly gone, they are just somewhere, in a place I cannot physically be in, energy conversion be damned. I guess even Science can support me somehow at this point.

For now, though, it is faith that tells me: the people that I care for are in a better place, in another level of existence, and that I know that I am [still] cared for in return. And that I make this statement regardless of religion, regardless of science.