Near-Death-Experiences

I love fiction, TV programs and movies about the supernatural. So, I was interested yesterday when the Chiller network showed a series that I had missed the first time around called All Souls. They showed it from the pilot through all six episodes. It was very good. Too bad the show didn’t last longer.

The show takes place in a very haunted hospital. It made me think a little of the series Stephen King’s Kingdom, though I thought this series was much better. All of the episodes were interesting but I was left thinking about the last show in which someone more or less manipulates patients into having near-death-experiences -- and not very nice ones either. In fact, they’re quite hellish. In them they meet some kind of ancient entity who, loosely translated, is known as “Roger.” (It probably loses some of its fright in the translation.) I guess the reason I found it interesting -- aside from normal curiosity about near-death-experiences -- is that my dad had an experience on the operating table when he had a heart attack. I say “experience” because he did die but it wasn’t the kind of experience that people usually describe with a bright light and loved ones coming to meet you. When I was old enough to ask him about it he said that he saw nothing when he died. He said there was nothing. Just darkness. He was just dead.

Now, that’s kind of depressing. I don’t actually know if my dad was telling the truth or not. You should know that my dad was a very lapsed Catholic. By lapsed I mean that he hadn’t set foot in a Catholic church for 50 years, so that’s pretty lapsed. Getting him to go to any kind of church or participate in any kind of religious activity was like pulling teeth. He just went through the motions if you forced him. So, he may have been dealing with some guilt and other issues of his own when I asked him what he saw when he was dead. Who knows? Maybe he had one of those bad experiences you hear about. Maybe minions from hell came to try to take him away and he didn’t want to admit it. Or maybe he had a beautiful experience and he didn’t want to talk about it. Or, maybe he was telling the truth and there was nothing.

I guess I would feel better if my dad had told me he saw a beautiful light and felt like he was surrounded by love. But somehow thinking that there is nothing else when we die doesn’t come as such a surprise to me either. I think that this life could be all there is. I hope not. But it could be.

On the other hand, I am not eager to have a near-death-experience and find out for myself.

My dad said something else interesting to me not too long before he died. He said that he thought God was a God of Love. He didn’t believe that God could cast his children into hell or let them suffer for all eternity. That wouldn’t be something that a father would do. I think my dad was worried about where he was going to go after he died. I do think there’s love out there, somewhere. I hope it was there for him.