My husband and I attended a funeral last month. Funerals can be, as this one was for us, a time for quiet reflection and an assessment of our time here on earth so far. If your relationship with your significant other is perhaps languishing, I highly recommend a good funeral. This is an opportunity for thought-provoking and philosophical discussion, appreciation for one another, etc. Thinking about death got us into a lively and riveting debate about faith. Many physicians we know in my husband's profession are atheists. As a "renaissance" woman myself, and fairly well studied in areas such as astrophysics and engineering, I still find our universe an amazing place that does not preclude the existence of God. Our four year old has been asking a lot of questions about death and what happens to people, so I have been in the hot seat on the subject. Parents are suppose to have all the answers, right? I take this parental role to heart and strive to dole out wisdom worthy of the finest fortune cookies. This is a tall order (probably more for some than others). I grew up with a mother who amused herself to no-end by educating me with tall tales and made-up words, and you can imagine my distress when I came home from school at the tender age of 5 after having been ridiculed relentlessly and discovering that no one on God's green earth refers to our tushes as "tooleys" or our excrement as "dupers". Nor had there ever really existed a little girl named Suzanne who had her head lopped off by a utility pole while leaning out a school bus window. The rich array of completely fabricated stories that made up a good portion of my home education as a primary schooler would fill an encyclopedia and it was pure, unadulterated fiction.
Fast forward to present day. Being my mother's child, I have a strong predilection to occasionally tell a tall tale for my own personal amusement and satisfaction, yet I've learned to refrain. The real challenge has been my own high bar to come off as Albus Dumbledore in my own home. I am no Subject Matter Expert (SME as the military lingo goes) in life and death. The funeral had me wondering about silly things, like if we have souls that make up the essence of what we are, I suspect they do not exist in the realm of physics as particles we would recognize. Why wouldn't people who lost hundreds of pounds on a diet be in jeopardy of losing part of their soul? And if we ever invent transporters like in Star Trek, where would your soul go? The transporter can reassemble every atom of you, but how could it recognize your soul if it is not made of atoms as we know it? A skeptic would scoff and reply that there is no such thing as a soul, but I am certain this is untrue. I believe the essence of who we are is more than our brain, our heart, and our miscellaneous body parts.
Well, our time here is limited and that is a fact. Comradery, friendship, service to others, these are all ways to experience quality personal growth in the here and now, and perhaps investing in your role in eternity. What a bargain deal! And just maybe, when you reach out to others, you are enriching your own role as "SME" in your own home for where love grows best, in our souls.
