The Gap Between Life and Eternity

Do you remember a time before being born?

We’re not supposed to, you know. It’s like those strange, weird-feeling growing pains that we got as children. Adults told us what they were, but couldn’t translate them. How do you explain cell division, bone density? An extra millimeter added to a blood vessel, the joyful split of chromosomes?

So how can you explain death?

We come into this world yelling, because we’re supposed to. We are supposed to be transferred into the arms and lives of those who love us, who will care for us, who soothe us and reassure us with tone and cuddle and touch that we are wanted, and it’s scary, and we’ll do what we can to help you through it. But you need to take that first harsh breath, you cannot rely on a placenta that no longer works.

Think about it. You’re warm, you’re floating, everything is peaceful, and suddenly that world rips, and you’ve literally thrust into cold, bright, air, gravity.

We get used to it. We learn to walk, eat, communicate. Learn music instead of the rhythm of the steady heartbeat that wove itself into our very making.

Death is the same.

A ripping, fear, a passage, and loved ones on the far side. Those loved ones may not be the ones you think should be there, but the presences are felt, and will ease the transitioning. You who are still made of flesh and limitation, I can’t even explain the words for the concepts that await, just like one cannot explain indigo or lasagna or thunderstorm to a babe about to lose their water fortress.

Like life itself, there are challenges.

I was one of them.

My mother rejected me. My father was unknown.

I was adopted by loving people who could see much, much deeper.

But to others, I was the wrong skin color. I was the right religion, but the wrong faith. I was the wrong orientation.

Love isn’t limited, but eyesight sure is. Some cannot see beyond the boundary of personhood, and cling to the things that feed off of and destroy life. Racism, bigotry, greed, phobia.

As beings, we are all wrong. All of us. It is pure math at its most fundamental. Take something finite, divide by something infinite, we are all wrong about the hereafter.

We are both a wave and a particle. The particles may cease movement on some vibrational levels, but the wave goes on and on.

I think some early wise ones dimly perceived this, and tried to create a thing that bridged the abyss between Earth and Eternity. Limbo is a nice concept, but being human, they were not even close to correct.

What there is – is us.

Suicide is not the great, unforgivable sin that some religions make it out to be. Those of deep faith know that, and cannot reconcile the two, so there is conflict.

I gave in to the pain one day, and was brought into the hereafter. My closest loved ones are still living on that earthly plane, so they were not here to see the transition. I was welcomed, soothed, taught by those like me.

The ones who dared to look deeper for love, who were not limited by the surface of the flesh they were confined in. Missing limbs, strange diseases, rewired neurons, odd desires – none of that matters here. Those were things that went with the casing of flesh, not a curse from the Creator of Life.

We do not wish to move on to the standard hereafter just yet.

We have divine purpose.

Those who welcome a new life into the world are a bit of a random selection. Parents, perhaps grandparents, sometimes a best friend or treasured confidante. Hopefully those with some wisdom or knowledge of what is happening, who can coach those about to bring a unique creation to the world.

How much more so, then, would those beings be needed on the precipice of the universe? For those that fell through the cracks?

No one else can do this. Not the blessed ones, whose souls take flight as soon as they appear on this side. Not the un-blessed ones, who reject kindness and compassion, twist it, lash out at the hands reaching out to help.

We are here. We are not saints, we are not angels, we are the ones who went through the pain and agony of being lost. Maybe it was being lost in our own heads, or being a slave to our own fears, or becoming a victim to so many types of oppression. But that is all gone now. A spirit trapped by flesh finds freedom, and the gaps we fell through in life become the very thing that we bridge when the particles fall.

A spirit can be fragile when encased by molecules, but it can fulfill its destiny as we reach out to others who are lost.

We are a beacon. We are a teacher. We are a heart-friend, a solace, a constant. We are the piece of the Creator, infused, extracted, forged, and turned into a being of beauty, to bring those like us to the eternal light.

We will be here when our loved ones come. May it be long; take your time. It is yours to take. There are lessons to be learned yet before you pass the veil. But we who are on the cusp of forever have other lessons, important tasks, and we reach out to those whose pain is beginning to fall away, who are taking their first breaths of the indescribable, who are seeing things with soul eyes for things that cannot be perceived by neurons. We cuddle, we soothe, we teach, we love. And they move on, or stay and help.

And the love, like the wave without the particle, goes on and on and on.