Unique1,
Honey if anything happen to you before my life came to an end I would not let you be forgotten. I love you and though your not my child, your the child of my dear ex-JW-friend. Therefore you are part of my extended family always.
How to view death and wondering if there is a hereafter is tough. I've never feared death ever, why I am not sure. I could believe that this life is all there is and that we need to make the best of it because when we die we just cease to exist, no suffering, no thought, no anything. It would be as the bible says "The remberance of us is forgotten" Eccl 9:5. If though we return to a spirit being and there is reincarnation as some believe, we will have new experiences as a new and different person. We won't remember our past lives so they doing interfer with the current life. Would that be so terrible if it was that way? The thing is we won't know till we've passed. I thing we should embrace both and just wait and see. Death should not be feared though.
After Dak died I clung to the JW teachings about death, but it only made me more sad that there would be no way to know or see him until an earthly resurrection. As I studied and learned the bible was human perception of God I realized that it may not be the only "Truth" there is about death. Could Dak have died and continued alive in a spirit form somewhere? I had dreams that showed me Dak in a room with me locked out but through a glass door happy and doing art work with a dear friend of mine who had died 25 years ago. She (Karen) was telling him about how she and I became friends in 4th grade and how she had always been with my family watching my sons grow up. Now I honestly had not thought of Karen in many many years, and the Dream I had was strange to me. Karen died in an automobile accident when she was 24 that was called a suicide. She and I were friends from 4th grade till she passed when I was 23. I never thought of her being with me as I'd become a JW by the time I was 22, just as she did too because of me.
Are such dreams an evidence of life after death? I don't know but I found the dreams I had about Dak after his death comforting. In another dream he was assuring me he alive, happy, and busy and that everything was ok in the spirit realm. If my brain was trying to conjure up things then this is not what I expected because I still believed in the JW way when the dreams came to me. Thus the reason the dreams seemed so bizarre to me.
I have no answers, but I look at it this way. If we just live the best kind of life we can and die, we won't know any different will we if there is no afterlife? We wouldn't even know if anyone remembers us or not or care. If we live the best life we can and die, and our spirit separate from our body to move on then we will understand the spirit world on some level and that won't be scary. I believe that Jesus tried to teach us to not fear death but to search out the Divine Father not necessarily the Hebrew God of judgement. I see the Divine as a loving caring spirit who care about us, and does not want us terrified of living and dying. The Divine I believe in now is pure love, and there is no fear or terror in knowing the Divine.
Would faith in a hearafter that is full of love hinder your love of life now and be the best human you can be hinder you in anyway? Shouldn't, so you can believe anyway you wish. If believing in the an afterlife would give you comfort then believe it. Find what makes you feel comforted. It's not alway necessary to embrace what we might consider reality if it causes us to be depressed and unhappy. But do believe that Love is important in all you do and say and experience in this life. Push the negative away from you, and avoid negative thinking because it will only drag you down.
Warm Love and hugs my child,
Balsam
