Talking to the Dead

It’s not often you get to die, consider how you feel about it, and then wake up.

This is an account from eons ago. I can’t find it anywhere written down online and I wanted to send a friend to it. So I’m putting it here for posterity and then I’ll have a link.

*

We were just standing around. Me (I was a young man) and quite a few other young men. We were standing on the street, outside the building, just talking. Inside the building was a real party, for the wedding. Our friend’s wedding. It was that time of life where we’d all start doing that, and he’d gone and done it.  We talked about little things, not important things, just daily life and the world as it was.

I almost hadn’t come.  My uncle had tried to get me to come fishing with him, a trip that would have prevented my being here with my friends, and he really leaned on me about it, but I refused. It wasn’t about him, or about the wedding, I just didn’t really feel like going fishing is all. He was very disappointed. I’d have to go see him soon.

And then we blanked out. For a minute. A moment? A few minutes. I’m not sure. We were just standing there talking, and then I felt this incredible wind that seemed to blow right through me. [Note from PJ: it felt exactly like those old eye-doctor things that blew a gust of air into your eye. Except it was body-wide, and ‘through’.] I realized, sort of hazily, dreamily, that only I and another were in the circle we’d been in a moment before. And then a couple more seemed to pop back into place. And then another. And then a couple more. I looked around. I couldn’t seem to see very well anymore, but it seemed so incredibly… messy all over. I had the sense it was body parts, but it felt very distant, not even consciously thought about.

Then I realized I was dead. We were dead. All of us. My god, what had happened? I considered the mess. Our location. A car bomb. That had to be it. I felt a sense of ‘knowing’ that told me this was accurate.

Time got weird then. I don’t remember much until what I think was the next day, or so, at my funeral. I wanted to go to my mother but I couldn’t, because she and my sisters and other women were crying so terribly that it was as if I couldn’t get near them. I considered the events, but I wasn’t thinking about much, until I heard my name.

Clear as day. Clear and strong and rang like a bell right in the center of what would have been my head if I still had one.

It was my uncle. And he talked to me. And he told me his bad feeling and why he wanted me to go fishing with him, and he told me how much he loved me. I marveled at the absolute clarity of his thoughts in me. And I concluded it was because he was talking directly TO me. With the total belief that there was still a “me” to talk to. Not thinking of me as a ghost or a memory. Not in emotional upheaval like the women. Just totally aware that I could and would hear him, if he did.

**

This left me with the belief that the only good way to talk to dead people is to (a) not be emotional at that time, at least not too much, and (b) talk to them clearly, with the understanding that they do hear you.

PJ