The convenience of avoiding those who (you think!) will be dead before you are

Don't send me flowers when I'm dead. If you like me, send them while I'm alive.

Brian Clough

How convenient it is to forget those of us who are ill. For friends and family, each of us a  memento mori You don't come around any more, because we are ghastly and just no fun. Your loss-- while we are alive and also when dead. Come to our funerals, if you must, but remember our survivors know who you are,

Cold Comfort

Many rationalists say you live on in others' memories, but admit that when all those who remember you are gone from this life, so are you. On the other hand, I have observed that the deaths of all I have known, leave a space in my mind, some large some small, that fills in with other material, often inconsequential--what's for dinner, the price of milk--that crowd out the reality of the formerly alive. They will be gone before I am. So much for rationalism as comfort.

Huis Clos

Should I assume that if I meet my family in  the afterlife (Olam Haba) and that they are pleasant,kind and generous I would be in heaven or if they are cantankerous.stingy without a good word to say, I

would be in hell.

Al-Chet

I'm not going to heaven. I posted a troll-like comment on my neighborhood Facebook page. I am hoping that deleting it will get me off heaven's no-fly list.

Heaven on earth

Some say reality isn't real, time, not linear, and dying, not death, which is kind of nice, because it makes horrible things not horrifying.

Halina in the Next World

During our conversation in the waiting room of the cancer center blood lab, Halina Tracy in a sweeping gesture across her cancer ridden body [http://ganeden100.blogspot.com/2015/02/halina-in-next-world.html] said,"I'm done with all this." Her eyes were bright in her sad face. "I'm on to my next adventure.'

I was called into the lab; she was no longer in the waiting room,when I left. I probably will never see her again unless I join that adventure of hers.

Devoutly To Be Wished

We all know the upside of dying: escape from the world's suffering, the afflictions of one's own life, the prospect of the future pain of those we love. I believe that before we die, this thought  helps us sail across the river Lethe to a peaceful afterlife in whatever blissfully ignorant form it takes.

Reincarnation vs Science

I am afraid of reincarnation, because I fear that my jiva has bad karma. I don't want to come back as a mosquito or a Republican.

Sometimes I think that I've made moral progress, but then I'll observe some odious behavior like envy or childish aggression and worry about a disagreeable incarnation, not necessarily a bad thing seeing how short life is in the large scheme of things. The suffering won't be too long and the possibility of Nirvana is so attractive. On the other hand, if I stick with scientific materialism, I will have the prospect of Nirvana in the form of conservation of energy without the drudgery of being reborn.

Hades and Sheol

In Hades, where even Odysseus did not dare visit, Cerberus growls as Charon rows you across the Acheron. On the shore, suffering shadows of former human beings wander about a thin fog. You look down at what was your body and know you are joining these hopeless shades. The Hebrews imagined the same nowhere for their dead. This place is the insult to the injury that was your life.

Gehenna

If I were to come to believe in the survival of the so-called "soul,"I would couple that conviction with the Jewish idea of Gehenna. There for a year souls are rid of malevolence, greed, envy, individualism, capitalism and all other forms of inhumanity. Only after such purification can the soul ascend to heaven.

I fancy that I will meet my mother and father there and be able to love them without doubt about their intentions. Likewise, my dogs will be in heaven without incessant barking and jumping on counters to steal food.

Afterlife

Because of an excessive awareness of death, I have thought excessively about death.

For humans, being alive usually involves awareness of the future. No doubt, our oldest human ancestors were aware of the end-points in their personal futures and in those of succeeding generations. The end point of life for most of us who are not great mystics is inconceivable.  I guess that's how we got to conceptualizing the after-life.

Since I am actively considering my own end-point, and, although I try, I'm not a very good mystic. I'm confused  So, the purpose of this blog is to record my thoughts about heaven as it relates to life-threatening illness and to try to clarify my thinking about the future.