How will I know when I’m dead?

I remember when my Mother died and I was devastated. I wandered around for about two years before I got conscious again. Moved to the West Coast and started a new life. Fast forward 40 years and I have had a tremendous amount of adventures traveling the country and the world.

I have worked with some great people and I have rubbed shoulders with many of the world’s finest artists.

I have three sons, four grands and a slew of cousins. Most of the generation that preceded us is gone, so we are the elders of our generation.

I often think of that moment when I found out that my Mother died. As I pondered the meaning, with my still adolescent mind (although I was 21) I just cried. I knew I would miss her terribly and I just cried.

As an adult, I started to compare it to moving away and not seeing someone ever again. How is it different? I still feel the same way about the people I left when our family relocated from New Jersey to Pennsylvania.  I was 7 years old. There are several whom I have not seen since.  Have they died?

And when we break-up with a lover, often, except for traveling in the same circles, we cease to see that person ever again. We will or we won’t miss them, have they died?

How is it different?

Is it expectation?  When a person dies, a lot of people are devastated because they won’t physically see that person again. When a person leaves, or moves, or is somehow permanently separated, in our mind we know that person still goes on. If it was any situation other than death, in our brain holds some belief that there’s a chance that we might ever see them again…regardless of the circumstances. In death, that belief is terminated.

Is it true?

How will I know if I am dead? Only man is conscious of thinking about what he is thinking about. Will I stop thinking? If I stop thinking, I won’t know that I’m not thinking and I won’t be aware that I am gone. What if my consciousness goes on? What if I just start thinking about other things instead? Maybe instead of how to pay that bill or get a new job, it's about how to get somebody’s energy higher using whatever my skills and talents are ‘on the other side.’ What if I become part of the greater consciousness of the earth – if you believe that there IS a greater consciousness? What if I become part of the Divine Energy of the planet – just the good stuff?

I have no answers, it is just a question that came to me this morning. 

I offer you this poem:

The Ship

I am standing on the seashore
A ship sails and spreads her white sails to the morning breeze
She is an object of beauty and I stand ther watching her till at last she fades on the horizon
And someone at my side says, ‘She is gone’
Gone where?
Gone from my sight, that is all.
She is just as large in the masts, hull and spurs as she was when I saw her
And just as able to bear her load of living freight to its destination
The diminished size, the total loss of sight is in me, not in her,
And just at the moment when someone at my side says, ‘She is gone’
There are others who are watching her coming and other voices take up the glad shout
'Here she comes'

And that is DYING.

BISHOP BRENT