At 86, my father lay at the precipice of passing. He spends nights talking to ‘friends’ – those being his mother, an old friend or angels he claims to be guides. During the waking hours, my father’s life is not unlike Elizabeth Kubler-Ross.
“For 15 hours a day, I sit in this same chair, totally dependent on someone else coming in here to make me a cup of tea,” Kubler-Ross says. “It’s neither living nor dying. It’s stuck in the middle.”
Watching a loved one pass can be painful, gratifying, even joyous. Seems ritualistic for my mother, for this is not the first time my father died.
May 21th, 2001 was the first time my father passed. During emergency procedures, he claimed to have an out-of-body experience and successfully repeated, verbatim, all medical procedures to every clinician. He briefly entered the brightest white light ever seen, spoke to his mother and was able to identify key angels, ‘helpers’ and ‘takers.’
The above background lays the groundwork for this post. My thoughts are not of the afterlife, white lights, or angels. Rather, I wish to document critical life lessons my father has revealed in the autumn of his.
Lesson 1
One beautiful thing about death is that one’s life circumstances doesn’t determine your outcome. Whatever your life, whatever your mistakes, God probably doesn’t view personal successes and failures as ‘black’ or ‘white.’ All of us are redeemable. All are loved. And in God, there are no ordinary moments, there is no ordinary person.
Lesson 2
We all feel heaven will end our human experience. Yet, my father has taught me heaven is a world where pain is not worth losing every other emotion and experience that makes us proud to be human. Spiritual living is a changing experience that should cause all of us to dig deep and live all the moments we’ve ever dreamed about, regardless whether they be here or in heaven.
Lesson 3
Love is the most powerful purifier of all. When our heart is filled with love, we are healed. God’s love resonates with everything around us that affects the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual well-being. True love purifies the spirit and cleanses the soul. Expect nothing less from heaven itself.
Lesson 4
Heaven is probably more like our world than we think. Just as we are a collaboration of energies, heaven is probably reinforces that everyone has something to contribute. Everybody has a purpose and a spiritual life attunes you to the rest of the universe. All the life force energy comes to your aid when your purpose is in attunement with betterment of the universe as a whole. “All energy is only borrowed … You have to give it back.”
Lesson 5
Lesson 5 summarizes 1 through 4. Simply stated, Heaven and life, are very similar to ramen. Maezumi from the film The Ramen Girl summarizes what my father has been trying to teach me for 58 years.
A bowl of ramen is a self-contained universe with life from the sea, the mountains, and the earth. All existing in perfect harmony. Harmony is essential. What holds it all together is the broth. The broth gives life to the ramen.
What’s in the broth? Love.