Tell you what, Kat, how about if you tap the shoulder of whichever of your colleagues is sorting you out? In the meantime, maybe you should hope none of your current clients had the same idea. Especially on these dark nights.

;-)


Alex

Sometimes it's hard enough to contact the living while you're alive. It must be an especially grave task when one is apparently dead.

JB

Ha ha,

When I first started in the profession, I was dreading my first time in the mortuary, because I had heard stories about the men hiding and jumping out on you, but they were all very kind and didn't do anything like that to me. Just as well, because I would have left and never gone back.

My gran always told me 'it's the living you should be afraid of, not the dead,' and I agree.

Kat

<Added>

Waxlyrical,

I suppose you know about the pun in your post, very good.

I do have this belief that most people who believe in God, do so because they are afraid of dying.

I agree. I read a study recently of Catholic church attendees that clearly showed many of them returning to regular church going after they’d reached fifty. To me that implies that a lot of older church goers are afraid of the Grim Reaper.

Grinder

I believe the saying, “the living should look after each other because the dead will take care of themselves.”

Grinder

Hey, we should start a collection of all these little sayings.

Yes, for some reason, people do start attending church as they get older. Some people who have never attended church in their lives, start going when they reach their seventies, and I agree Grinder, that it's because they are nearing their mortality and are afraid. Or perhaps they want to make sure they go to heaven and not hell, so think they ought to get in Gods good books by attending church!

Kat

<Added>

Oh, hubby's home, better go and cook dinner.

Night guys catch you later.

Kat

I do know that, ten years ago, when I stopped breathing for five minutes, and my lips when blue, I did not 'die' in the conventional sense. Yes, there was a coridoor of rippling light, and a keen awareness that I should return to my body, as my destiny, or purpose had not yet been served.

Unless you’re taking the mick that sounds like one hell of a story. Care to share?

For what it’s worth, I was technically born dead. I think it took the doctors a couple of minutes to get me breathing, which gave my mother quite a fright. For many years I was terrified that I was somehow “not meant to have lived”, that I’d slipped through the net and was living on borrowed time, that the Reaper would one day realise his mistake and hunt me down. But I don’t believe that anymore.

I believe that this is it, your one shot at consciousness. Do I believe in God?, personally I don’t, but I reserve the right to change my mind simply on the grounds that it would be unscientific to discount a theory simply because it cannot yet be proved or disproved.

Hang on, there’s a tall man wearing a cloak and holding a large farming tool standing at the front door. I think I’ll just get that, back in a mo…

Grinder

Hang on, there’s a tall man wearing a cloak and holding a large farming tool standing at the front door

Give him a Grolsch; he'll be fine.


Alex

Oh, hubby's home, better go and cook dinner

Just don't tell him where you got the grilled kidneys...


Alex

I'm not at all surprised at frightened people turning to religion for comfort. Godfearing, and all that, as a national pastime, what ho. Fear goes out from organised religion - it is only natural that it should also flow toward it. Without fear, where would they be? Take away guilt, fear's accomplice, and churches across the land would stand empty until doomsday. Hasn't fear of death been preyed on by the church for countless centuries?

I overdosed on heroin when I was twenty three. Yes, stupid I know, and I haven't used since. It was a very dark period of my life, and the overdose wasn't intentional - but I clearly recall standing in a coridoor of golden light, looking across at my friend' desperate attempts to revive me. Either side of me, droplets of golden light were falling, and I watched as my friend Sarah gave up slapping me. She sat on the bed and wept, and my lips were blue.

I had a sudden strong sense of choice, that things were 'incomplete' of I decided to leave my body. I also felt an overwhelming sense of love, for just about everything, and the next thing I knew I was waking up. My lips were blue. When the paramedics finally arrived, they were stunned that I had been 'brought back'.

My life changed from that point onward. I cleaned up my act and moved away from danger. But the incident has always stayed with me, and I can't quite believe it was a dying hallucination. Something else was present that day. Something very powerful and very clear about all existence.

JB

I clearly recall standing in a corridor of golden light, looking across at my friend' desperate attempts to revive me.

That is quite an experience, and I can understand why it would have a profound effect on you.

and I can't quite believe it was a dying hallucination. Something else was present that day. Something very powerful and very clear about all existence.

Are you completely convinced, or would you be open to a non-paranormal explanation?

Grinder

Oh, I've heard theories and don't dismiss them. I also accept that somewhere in my being, I am not infallible to hope either and want to believe in something 'other' so much that it becomes true.

A philosopher once wrote 'as a man sees, so he is'. I believe that, at least. Another good one is 'the universe rearranges itself to accomodate your version of reality'.

What if people who believe they go to heaven or reincarnate do? What if those that don't, don't? There are too many possible outcomes for me to put my money on anything for sure, and that's how I like it. I guess I'm a spiritual agnostic with occult pretensions.

JB

I've read similar accounts of near-death experiences. There was a book, the title of which I can't remember, by someone called (I think) George Ritchie. He was seriously ill with tuberculosis, or maybe pneumonia, while in the US Army, and during his illness came very close to dying. The book is very vivid about the experience.


Alex

My friend the Franciscan monk claims he was once saved by a two drops of Lourdes water placed on his tongue when he was given up for dead in a Chinese hospital.

I once had a strange experiences when all the room was filled with light and I felt at one with the universe. I was about fourteen and wrote about it in a diary and an adult I showed it to said it was a kind of mystical experience. I wasn't on drugs but I had been smoking a cigarette. It was probably a Woodbine.

I was once thrown through the windscreen of a car when travelling at 70 miles an hour on the M4 and I survived with a broken shoulder blade and concussion. I was about thirty then. I remember thinking for about a year that my life was all a kind of bonus after that.

Sheila

Amidst all the near-death experiences, the point is about writers that they have crystal balls (speak for yourselves, guys!) To be serious for a moment, the act of writing requires you to look ahead and predict what will happen in a character's future, which may be a character based on someone you know, or indeed yourself. Since the seeds of destiny are sown in the present, it's not altogether difficult to ascribe events to your characters that you know will ultimately happen to their living alter ego - the inevitability factor, you might say.

However, the original question implies "impossible knowledge." Here is where I get off the bus. A writer may well have an unerring instinct and among hundreds of less than impressive predictions get one spot on. But that does not imply psychic power, nor should it be thus interpreted. We are mortal and not possessed of supernatural powers. End of story!

Andy