Grappling with Questions of Death & Existence

I’ve been putting off this piece for a while now, not because I’m necessarily afraid of writing it, but because the issues at hand are so massive, medium blogging doesn’t seem capable of making a dent in them. Still, for the sake of reflection and documentation, I’ll take a shot at exploring some of the larger questions associated with death and existence beyond our lives on Earth.

And, full disclosure before I dive in: I’m a religious/spiritual agnostic, which means I have no clue about what happens to us beyond our physical lives. The older I’ve grown and the more I’ve learned, the more I’ve realized I don’t know, and the less sure I am of anything. Such as it is with religious matters, despite having a mother who is a Presbyterian pastor and having been raised in the Presbyterian church. I certainly have an intellectual understanding of Judeo-Christian faith and I can appreciate the role that faith plays in other people’s lives, I simply don’t share it. And I’m not threatened by those beliefs and that faith (although I would caution anyone who is confronting a recent widow/widower to tread lightly around this issue, as statements like ’s/he is in a better place’ could backfire spectacularly). It’s encouraging to think of Chelsea being in some equivalent of the ‘Good Place,’ a place in which we could potentially reunite. But I lack the belief system supporting the idea, which leads to some significant struggles processing Chelsea’s passing.

Here’s my basic problem: I want to know that Chelsea is alright, wherever/whenever she is in the Cosmos, but that, at least for me, is an unknowable issue. I develop knowledge through rational/empirical methods based on the human experience, not through faith in religious interpretations of the universe. Now, I’m the first to admit that my system of knowing has its limits, which is a big reason why I’m agnostic. And Chelsea’s current status, if she even has one, falls outside of my understanding into this religious/spiritual realm. So I’m stuck, not capable of answering the most important question I have, and that’s hard.

One potential work around is to punt on that question and focus on what’s happening in this world. There are multiple ways in which Chelsea continues to ‘live’ in our world: her matter will recycle through nature and reconstitute new life, her intellectual impact on the Academy will live on through the work of future scholars, and her impact on students/ colleagues will continue influencing their lives. Most importantly, she has a daughter who encompasses many of her traits, and her daughter will carry those traits forward into the future.

So in many ways, Chelsea’s still here with us. Every day, I feel her influence on my life, whether it’s a memory or her voice in the back of my head reminding me to be kinder, or to be more precise with my language. And in spite of my agnosticism, I do still talk to Chelsea, although I recognize this might be some sort of performative, psychological act (for the record, I don’t give a s*&t why it works because I feel better while doing it).

But what about Chelsea’s essence, her soul, the stuff apart from her matter that made her her? When I found her body the day she died, I had this overwhelming sensation that Chelsea’s ‘essence’ was gone; her body was lying on the ground in front of me, but I had this sensation of absence and emptiness. It just felt like Chelsea wasn’t in the room where her body was. Who knows if that was some form of shock, or some type of psychological defense mechanism, but it felt profound, that sense of emptiness/absence.

It’s hard to ignore those sort of sensations, but their meaning exists beyond my current understanding of the world. So we’re back to questions/interpretations that are, at least for me, unknowable. And the reality is, I just have to get used to the fact that I won’t be able to sufficiently answer one of the most important questions I’ll ever have. Because, to be frank, I care a lot more about Chelsea right now than I do my own life; that’s how much she meant and continues to mean to me. And it’s hard to just casually set aside the ambiguity surrounding the well being of a person you love more than yourself.

Now there is a potential upside to this ambiguity: I don’t know what happened to Chelsea, but that doesn’t necessarily mean what happened to her was bad. My fear is rooted in the negative possibilities of the unknown: she simply doesn’t exist, or she’s in pain somewhere. But just as I have no evidence to support claims concerning her current whereabouts, I also have no evidence to suggest those whereabouts tilt in a negative direction. Again, I simply don’t know, which means I have to acknowledge all possibilities. And if you pushed me to make claims, I’d probably double down on the side of the unknown, as I think we (humans in general) lack the language and capacity to sufficiently understand what happens to us when we die.

How do you comprehend something that’s incomprehensible? We can use our language to develop approximations of what happens, but I’d venture to guess that the real answer lies outside our realm of understanding. Maybe all of our religious explanations get a piece of the answer right; maybe none of them do.

My personal favorite story to tell about death links to one of my favorite Vonnegut books, Slaughterhouse-Five. Maybe, upon death, we develop the extra-sensory perception of time that the Tralfamadorians have, and can ‘move’ through time at will just as we walk backwards and forwards through space. Maybe, when I die, I can simply ‘walk’ back to a moment I shared with Chelsea and ‘relive it’ however many times I want, whatever that means. That sounds pretty appealing right now, having the ability to sit with Chelsea again, have a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, and relive one of our conversations just as it was when we first experienced it.

But again, who the hell knows. E is asking me a lot about this stuff, and I have to keep telling her, “I don’t know, and neither does anyone else” which I suspect will be a common refrain for the next few years.

Quick tangent on little kids: keep your beliefs about the afterlife to yourself around young children, as they are too concrete in their thinking to comprehend our notions of the afterlife. They can’t separate beliefs from knowledge, and if you talk to them about heaven, they’ll treat it on equal footing with a physical place they’ve been, like a park. Better to say you don’t know, and punt the heavy stuff until they’re a little older.

It’s funny to have written so much and feel like you’ve said virtually nothing. Again, this feeling is probably why it took me so long to write about spiritual topics. But I do think my meandering gives insight into how I’m thinking about these issues in the immediate aftermath of a huge loss, so maybe you can find something useful in this piece. I hope so.