Death’s Aftermath
Much happens after a person dies – at least for the loved ones left behind. There are the preparations for his memorial, to be held on his birthday on 4/17. Money is an issue. Bit by bit we are excavating Da’s method of filekeeping which, like that of many geniuses, made sense only to him.
Then there’s this:
An appearance to one of his grandchildren in a dream. In it he was young, and his grandson didn’t recognize him at first. Da told him that he was alright and that he didn’t need to worry about him. The grandson hadn’t known that Da was close to death, let alone at the time of the dream, actually dead.
Before you start thinking that I’ve lost my marbles, let me tell you something. 28 years ago there was a string of deaths in my family that ended three years later. In almost every one of those deaths, the dead person appeared to a loved one in a dream and provided some kind of assurance or forgiveness. In some of those cases, the person who had the dream hadn’t known the deceased was actually dead.
Da and I probably would argue about this. He would say that these were dreams reflecting wishful thinking and there was no proof that the dead actually communicated with the living.
I would argue that just because we cannot formulate a test methodology at this time should not mean that we ignore the data. After all, anecdotal evidence is often the first type of evidence theories acquire on the long road to validation.
I’m sure I wouldn’t change his mind, nor he mine.
