Ive taken the time to read all the posts in this thread and am amazed at the deep looks into this there are. I for one was raised Catholic and sort of denounced my faith and have become a person with no real religious beliefs.
I believe it that we think about death at least 2 times a day, I often think about it while driving mostly. Especially late at night. I often wonder what would happen if I suddenly died, my car crashed and I was gone. Would my thoughts, my memories all disappear into nothing? Would the inner voice I have be transferred elsewhere? I don't necessarily believe in re-incarnation but the thoughts of where that 'soul' goes often crosses my mind even though I believe nothing may happen at all when we die.
My personal experiences with death have always made me question my non-beliefs and wonder if there are some other outer things working in the universe. For one, when my uncle was in the hospital with cancer; my cousin and I spent a night with him. Her and I couldn't sleep at all, through the night he was talking in his sleep about the most messed up things, spiritual, paranormal, crazy odd memories.. We were freaked.. He passed away that morning.
My Nana died 2 years ago in October after falling and hurting herself while at our cottage and experiencing a house fire a month earlier. Now my grandpa basically saved her, got tons of burns on him and the experience sort of made things go downhill for them both after that.
After my Nana passed, I definitely believe of someone dying of a broken heart. He lost his license, his house, and had to be put into a home with moderate assistance after she passed. He died almost exactly a year after she did in October. Within that year he went from driving back and forth from Toronto, to not even knowing who his children were due to dementia.
We were speaking to the nurses one day after discovering he had slipped in the shower and had a broken leg which he didn't ever tell anyone about for a week (he was just the type of man who never wanted to inconvenience anyone). She said that whenever someone in the home dies, that all of the resident cats hang out in their room the day before they pass... I thought that was complete bull.. But the day before he died, my dad was visiting him and 4 cats stood inside his doorway acting very odd. My grandpa died the next day looking into my dad's eyes.
That sort of things really irks me about death, just the bizarre, freaky things that occur, the fact animals can sense it, makes me wonder if there's some kind of aura surrounding those ready to pass.
We had a big life celebration (our family doesn't have funerals or burials, we all want to be cremated) and a big slideshow of memories and drinks and food and whenever I think of death I always remember what my dad told me on that day, about death being a part of life, and the ability to have our grandpa in each and every one of us keeps him alive even after his body has disappeared. His spirit, his being, his love, his personality, his memories are all carried within all of his family and those who knew him. We spent hours talking about him and our memories of him, and those are what carry on a person past the grave.. the people who he made an impression on.
I really really hold that thought close to me when I ponder my own death.
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