I’m watching the Netflix series Surviving Death, which kind of sounds like an action movie that should take place in Prague with an ex-Marine driving his mini down narrow canals to escape the bad guys. But – it’s about Near Death Experiences.
Apparently there are so many levels and extreme layers to how people have come back from death and can continue to receive a kind of connection with the spirit world. I’m enjoying the show and have something to label my three sightings of my dear old dad now. In the three sightings, he’s been a white personage out of the corner of my eye. The sightings have also been followed by a song from Queen, his way of talking to me through Freddy Mercury.
Yesterday, I saw a white head and torso floating in my hallway but nothing else and this morning, I woke with Bohemian Rhapsody blaring in my head. The other song he puts into my head out of nowhere is Mr. Fahrenheit. His message: don’t stop him, and don’t sweat it. He’s having a good time.
I told him out loud: “Dad, you weren’t supposed to die so suddenly and at 79.” In the last luxurious, two-hour conversation I had with him in March of last year, I told him, “Dad, stop talking about your death because you have to live to at least 83.”
He asked me why, even then, and I said, because I needed him around, at least until after I defended my PhD in June. He said he was already proud of me. “Bad answer. Bad Dad,” I said.
Because covid came, I never went down to see my parents in person but at least I got him for our last two-hour marathon conversation. My pop was a Renaissance man-meets Mr. Rogers-meets the Buddha–meets Mary Oliver’s little elf on the shelf. He was Mormon and so believed in the power of prayer. This he gave to me. Even though now I pray to a diffuse Goddess-Earth energy, I do believe in the quiet and the intention and the dedication to those two things. If I say God to you, I am acknowledging your faith and belief in that personage, that power, and that manifestation in your life.
Am I grateful to my father popping up with song and messages? Yes. Even though the spirit who keeps showing up is a little frightening, I’m trying to handle it because I so appreciate any bread crumb from that vast afterlife of energy. I’d love to believe in my own Katoon and thank Brit Marling’s OA heartily for one of the most brilliant renderings of the afterlife I could ever imagine.
I wouldn’t say I’m obsessed, but I miss my Dad and when he died, I couldn’t help feeling that my entire childhood died with him. The image that came to mind was of a huge ship filled with me and my siblings (of which are five, Mormons tend to have kids) and the masts have folded and we didn’t know that the ship had been sailing our entire lives through the clouds and stars, alternating. Now we are plummeting to Earth…and that’s the rest of our lives: plummeting.
So I talk to him a lot and feel the answers. When I told him he should have lived longer, he answers in my head: “What’s the point? What would it have brought you that was any different from what you had of me?”
“More time,” I answer.
He told me that my answer was an oxymoron where he is. There isn’t more time. It’s constantly fluctuating.
When I said I wanted to watch movies with him and share this amazing YouTube channel with him (The Netherlands Bach Society), he said that I already had shared them and that I continue to share these with him as I experience them.
Do I believe it’s him. Yup.
I know he forgives me for not being Mormon and that in the afterlife, religion is just a diffuse feeling. Spirituality is key. Insight rules the day. We have it here and access to it looks different for everyone.
Thanks for being here, Dad. And thanks for trying not to be scary. Keep the music coming!
My Not So Mormon Life: 