Mommy, what happens when we die?

When I asked this question as a kid, I was told that if I asked Jesus to be my savior, I’d go to heaven, where the streets are gold and everything is perfect. I was told I’d see all my relatives and even my pets, which were in an adjoining animal heaven.

How depressing it was when I realized the Bible is just a story, it’s not a secret held within regular paper pages of how this world came to be or will come to an end.

I never thought about me dying, myself, until my grandparents died when I was 30. Where are they? Where did they go? They went somewhere.

I have at times seen what feels like heaven, 40,000 miles in the sky over the Bering Sea. I saw the most beautiful droplets of silky caramel dribbled on the edges of clouds silhouetted against a rainbow horizon with a fade so gentle, it was clearly made of elements we don’t understand. The beauty there above the ocean made me cry, an emotional outpour from love and other things...beyond words. I’ve wanted my plane to crash into that heaven. I’ve felt unafraid in the face of emotionally devastating beauty. I’ve felt that is where my grandparents are. Somewhere indescribable. And not in a body, bodies stay on Earth.

I think my grandparents can feel, rather than see in the afterlife. I’ve felt that it's like living in one’s mind. No eyes, mouth, tongue, teeth. Just knowing and feeling what is around, who is there, what is seen in others' minds, all shared. This is death to me. Knowing and feeling my grandparents, my pets and being with them in a bubble of peace and painlessness.

Near death experiences are discounted as wires getting crossed in the brain, how the brain reacts to lack of oxygen, just the body dying and various other hypotheses that are incredibly short-sighted. I am developing a belief that these people, doctors, scientists are right. We are experiencing those things in our brain and those things make us feel good, but I add on top of that an idea that we are traveling outward from inside our minds, and those things are parts of the journey. Our minds hold a portal for escape from this dimension, this reality. We travel through that portal as our brain shuts down. Well known phrases such as "The answer is right in front of you!" and "God lives in you" "Your body is God's temple" come to mind. And finally make sense. This is my faith. My faith is in a kind afterlife. When we finally see it, we go, "Ohhh, of course!" and everything that ever was makes sense, and our place and what we do makes sense. All the near death experiences you’ve ever heard are true. I believe in them. I believe we need to go one step further and say, It’s a beautiful thing to die, look where we get to go if we believe in kindness and exercise kindness and trust that kindness is there.

Steve Jobs was a man looking for enlightenment in many different places. He believed in reincarnation. His sister, Mona Simpson’s eulogy is very beautiful here. And she tells us something very private, but something very encouraging, the perfect last message from a man who saw more. Steve’s last words:

OH WOW.  OH WOW. OH WOW.

It makes me smile. He got out and it feels good and I’m right. This is it. Yes.