Cosmos of Kate

It’s always been interesting to me, the things we remember from our childhoods. Seemingly mundane conversations and scenarios can end up being core memories, while big events might remain vague memories.

I have many memories with my grandma Hilda (my paternal grandmother), most of which are some of the happiest I have, and I think of them often. I remember the way she would say my name every time she saw me, how she taught me to nourish plants and help them grow (though I wish I had paid more attention to that bit), her making tuna sandwiches for me after school, how she asked me to stay and take over the family business instead of moving away to college (though I know she cared less about the business and more about the fact that I was leaving her), and how she would walk me through her rhododendron forest (as I called it) on a regular basis yet always had to remind me of their names. Though there is one memory in particular that has always stood out to me, and that I think about often, though I’m not exactly sure why.

I was likely around 10 or so years old and we were in the living room of “The Big House” (the infamous name given to my grandparents’ home by everyone who visited it), watching something on TV. She was in her swivel recliner and I was standing by the window, watching the light dance through the trees outside. Though I can’t recall what instigated it, we started discussing the topic of reincarnation, both of us pondering what we would come back as in our next lives, and what/who we might have been in previous lives. While certain details of that moment are somewhat fuzzy, it is a very cherished memory of mine and one that is a frequent visitor in my mind palace. Discussing death and subsequent life with the most important person I have lost thus far.

I think about my grandmother every single day, sometimes seeming to feel her around me. Not her ghost, but her energy. Ghosts have never made sense to me, but the transference of energy when we die makes sense to my scientific brain. That energy must go somewhere. All the energy it takes to make our hearts beat, our lungs breathe, our muscles move, our minds tick. According to the law of conservation of energy, “energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but can only be transformed from one form to another.” So where does it go? That is the question.

I’ve never been a religious person and was not raised religious. However, I’ve always been curious. I was raised by a mother who had had been raised Catholic, went to Sunday School at a Methodist church with my best friend when I was young, learned about the Mormon religion as a teen from another of my best friends, went down a dark path of atheism in my late teens/early 20s, studied Buddhism off and on throughout my adult life (this honestly makes the most sense to me as there is no actual deity involved), and have dated a Muslim. All of this to say, no I’m not religious, but I am also not ignorant of the subject. I know enough to know it’s not for me.

I do not believe in heaven and hell. I don’t believe there is an almighty entity that created the universe and is watching over us. None of that makes logical sense in my mind. I do, however, believe in an underlying energy that connects EVERYTHING in the universe. To me, that is God. We are God. We are part of the whole. We matter, we ARE matter. When we die, our bodies decompose and are recycled. Our matter transforms into other forms of matter. So it goes. We are stardust, and so we will be again.

But what happens to our SELVES when we die? Where do “I” go? For many people, this question leads to religious beliefs as a way to make sense of the question and try to find an answer. I have previously thought perhaps we just drift off when we die and don’t “wake up.” It’s not a scary idea to me. A very wise person once told me she thinks of it like this: we didn’t exist before we were born, and we won’t exist after we die. Maybe it’s truly that simple. Doesn’t sound so bad, to be honest. But what if there IS more after we die? What would it be like?

I recently began reading the book “My Next Breath” by Jeremy Renner (one of my favorite actors) who was run over by a snowcat on New Year’s Day 2022 and survived, making a miraculously full, though lengthy, recovery. In his book he described what it was like to die: “What I felt was energy, a constantly connected, beautiful and fantastic energy. There was no time, place or space, and nothing to see, except a kind of electric, two-way vision made from strands of that inconceivable energy, like the whipping lines of cars’ taillights photographed by a time-lapse camera.”

THIS! THIS is what I believe and feel. This is what gives me warm, fuzzy feelings of connectedness, love and peace. Not a being sitting somewhere watching us destroy ourselves, but an ethereal connectedness to EVERYTHING else in existence. This is what I think happens to our energy, our “spirit” when we die. We simply continue existing as part of the whole. Perhaps part of our energy will find its way into another life form at another point on the time continuum… assuming time actually exists. Perhaps that’s what reincarnation is.

So when I feel my Grandma’s energy around me, I believe it’s truly part of her interacting with me on some plane of existence. I believe people do truly go to a “better place” when they die, even if it isn’t the pearly gates we like to associate with the afterlife. I hope I am able to live a full, long life in this body, but the idea of death does not frighten me. If anything, it seems like living might be the hard part.