We're all progressing, I believe. Some days it feels that the improvement is minute, and other days it feels like it all happened so long ago. My sisters and I had the task of sorting through Mom's clothing and jewelry and from some of the clothing (which would never fit me, my Mother was impossibly tiny), I am eventually going to have a memory quilt made. We're also working on having a memorial bench installed at her favorite park in the Spring.
I've been giving Dad some basic cooking lessons and he's catching on quickly! Mom would definitely be proud of his growing menu. I like to think she's been keeping an eye on him. Us.
Actually, I've always been very much the skeptic about places like "heaven" and "hell." I'm quite the textbook agnostic, to be honest. The more I studied religions, the less I believed in any of them. I appreciated the history of them, the rituals, the art and the stories. But believe? Nope. Except possibly some forms of Buddhism which are not deity-based at all. Despite my disbelief, I always remained open to the possibly of some kind of other existence after, and possibly before, this one. There are just so many reports of people having experienced something. I don't believe all of the stories, though. Eben Alexander's "Proof of Heaven" was supposed to be groundbreaking - he was a neurosurgeon who experienced a whole long length of time somewhere "else" while in a coma. I read it, but wasn't convinced by his account.
Instead, it is the simpler and very average accounts - so many of them - that give me caus to remain hopeful that there is something more later. This is a good example I came across today:
“I’m not asking you to believe anything. I’m simply telling you what I believe. And I have no idea what the next life will be like. Whatever I saw was only from the doorway, so to speak. But it was enough to convince me totally of two things from that moment on: One, that our consciousness does not cease with physical death; that it becomes, in fact, keener and more aware than ever. And secondly, that how we spend our time on earth, the kind of relationships we build, is vastly more important than we can know.”
– George G. Ritchie, M.D., Near-Death Survivor
I don't count on it, though, enough to change my personal motto: carpe diem.
Because today may turn out to be all there is, and if so, I want it to be worth it.
