Proof of Heaven a Good Read for Grieving

On Saturday, I finished reading Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife by Eben Alexander, M.D.

I didn't go out and buy it after Ethan's death in search of some vision of heaven. Like a friend I made over the summer who had lost her son to a drug overdose a few years ago, or this blog that I began in September, it was one of the many things already in place when the need arose.

The book wasn't even something I picked up during December at all, and, although fewer than 200 pages, it took far longer to read it than I would have liked because if I got it out while the three Es were around, someone was sure to remove my book mark.

But with tears streaming down my face from the poem "When Tomorrow Starts Without Me," which was written by David Romano in 1993 and included near the end of the book, I finally finished it Saturday afternoon.

I had been warned that, being written by a doctor, the terms often slipped into medical and scientific and that it could be a heavy read at times because that terminology would be unfamiliar. But understanding that Alexander wrote the book at least partly to try to persuade fellow doctors that the Near Death Experiences, dreams and visions that he had once joined them in dismissing were real, helped me to skim the portions that were too difficult. They weren't necessary for me to understand to get what I needed from the book.

The book tells the story of Alexander's journey to the afterlife during a coma that should have ended in his death. He contracted bacterial meningitis and lapsed into a coma during which he was effectively brain dead. The part of his brain that could have dreamed or hallucinated his experience was not functioning and when he awoke, his family was in fact being called in to say their final farewells before life support was removed.

Before falling ill, Alexander attended church, but had no belief in his soul, a consciousness separate from brain waves, or an afterlife. He was a secular physician with no room in his mind for the NDEs of others or the visions they shared with him. From a purely scientific standpoint, he gave them no weight.

His trip beyond sent him back with a new understanding of life in that it is only a small portion of who we are and will be. He came back wanting to share the message that we are all loved, that we have purpose, and "All is well," which was his second phrase after awakening.

Alexander's glimpse of heaven wasn't what we typically come to expect or may have read in other stories recounting a NDE. But at the same time, he didn't spend as much of his story trying to describe what it looked like as what it felt like, both in an emotional way and in the way it felt to be there. His vision, however, helped me some with my grief.

The most meaningful bits for me came at the end of the book when he began trying to put what he had experienced back into perspective with his physical life and his understanding from training and years of experience as a neurosurgeon.

He wrote about his first visit back to church and how "I shuddered as I recalled the bliss of infinite unconditional love I had known... I understood what religion was really all about. Or at least was supposed to be about. I didn't just believe in God; I knew God."

And later "I felt like I was doing what every soul is able to do when they leave their bodies, and what we can all do right now through various methods of prayer or deep meditation. Communicating with God is the most extraordinary experience imaginable, yet at the same time it's the most natural one of all, because God is present in us at all times. Omniscient, omnipotent, personal -- and loving us without condition."

"The entire length and height of the physical universe is as nothing to the spiritual realm from which it has arisen -- the realm of consciousness (which some might refer to as 'the life force.').

"This other, vastly grander universe isn't 'far away' at all. In fact, it's right here -- right here where I am, typing this sentence, and right there where you are, reading it. It's not far away physically, but simply exists on a different frequency. It's right here, right now, but we're unaware of it because we are for the most part closed to those frequencies on which it manifests..."

He also writes about feeling at one with the universe and how all things are interconnected and everywhere at the same time in this other frequency.

Suddenly I knew how I saw Ethan in a sunbeam. For just a moment, perhaps, my frequency shifted enough to recognize his spirit there. I knew how my new friend whom I've never felt grieves that she can no longer feel her son, because her frequency has shifted the other way. I understand how sometimes I can almost see and feel him, because perhaps he is there, just the other side of my physical limitations, wanting me to know he's OK, while at the same time he's everywhere else and with God and my grandparents and the girl he knew in school who was killed in car wreck. Time and relationships and the things that bind us in this life aren't important or even real in the heaven Alexander saw.

There have been rebuttal books written from a "Christian" standpoint, but Alexander's book doesn't discuss theology or Christianity, or even very much what heaven itself was like, just his individual experience and his revelation that consciousness extends beyond our physical life and that, despite all his scholarly skepticism there is a God.

How we make our way to heaven, deal with our belief in God and our Savior, and make our peace with life in this earthly realm are up to us, but reading about a one man's conversion from unbelief to belief helped me. I believe it can also help others who are grieving, as well as those who are seeking answers and willing to accept a truth outside the realm of science and a heaven that doesn't need streets of gold to be the place where we can meet our God and Savior.

Watching the Grim Reaper

Have you ever seen anyone die?

Unless you're a medical professional, emergency responder or hospice volunteer, the answer may well be no.

That's what most "normal" people get to say. My past profession as a journalist, however, puts me in a different category. Although I wasn't necessarily up close and personal with the people I saw die, I was standing nearby when I saw that the fight was over, when emergency responders stopped their frantic efforts. Sometimes they walked away. Sometimes here was another soul still trapped in the mangled wreckage of what used to be a car, and the efforts continued around a sheet draped body.

I can remember the majority of those deaths, even if I cannot tell you the names of the people who died. I remember where they were at and what happened. Depending on my overall mood, sometimes the roads I travel are virtually haunted by those memories.

Lately, however, I've been grappling with the memory of a different death. A song by Brandon Heath, "Dyin' Day," which is on the CD that has taken up residence in my SUV's stereo system, has me thinking about execution. It's about a man facing his execution, witnessing to the guard who has treated him decently. He explains that Jesus has come to visit him every day since he invited him in three years earler. That Jesus made him an innocent man.

Nearly a decade ago I was one of the official witnesses to an execution by the State of North Carolina. Steven McHone(Wikipedia helped me to recall the name) had shot and killed his mother and stepfather in a rage. Shortly before his execution, his siblings had begged the state to commute his sentence. His step siblings, however, were not as forgiving and neither was the state.

The morning of the execution, after driving the long route to Raleigh and passing by protestors in the chilly night air outside the prison gate, I was seated with other witnesses in a small room. The man, who looked far different than the man in the mug shots I'd seen, was on a hospital style bed on the other side of a large window. When the set hour arrived, the witnesses watched the life drain from his face and the pallor set in.

At the time, it seemed his death was, if anything, just too easy. His jailhouse conversion was too pat. I had seen too many people die when there were people fighting for their lives, when they had done nothing wrong other than circumstance. I'd watched a firefighter carry a dead toddler in his arms when her car was run over by a truck loaded with steel pipes and her car seat wasn't properly secured. I'd seen them weep when the CPR they'd administered to a 5-year-old boy wasn't enough to save him from the head injury he suffered after his drunken uncle slammed head on into another vehicle on Christmas Eve. I'd seen them put down IV bags and walk away from the remains of automobiles as others draped the vehicle in a tarp to protect it from prying eyes.

His mother died knowing her son had shot her and asking them not to blame him. His death was just too easy. The judgment was what he had earned. My biggest problem with it at the time was that it really served no purpose and cost so much. It was so isolated from society that it couldn't possibly be a deterrent because no one who had not witnessed it would believe in it -- and even then they would likely never envision themselves in his place.

Now, I'm not so sure. Judgment isn't mine to make and it would seem living with the knowledge of what he had done would be the more difficult of the two sentences. I'm looking at him through different eyes and after using the vision I'm used to for so long, I admit I find it troubling. I'm probably becoming one of those people who would have to say I could not impose the death penalty based on "religious" views.

I know all Christians, and a lot of non-Christians as well, don't take that point of view. I've heard it from the pulpit many times. But I've also heard that sin is sin and can be forgiven, no matter how minor or major we may see it. That judgment isn't up to us because we're all sinners. I'm not sure that I would go so far as to say I would be able to forgive him if the people he had killed were my loved ones. But it's a goal I'm working toward. I know that a friend who lost two of his children to a drunk driver and was able to forgive the man has a much easier load to bear than anyone who drags around anger mixed in with his grief for the rest of his life.

And I have to believe that if he was genuine in his profession of faith, that when he was executed he was welcomed in heaven. That he was greeted by Jesus, and perhaps his mother was among those who were there with open arms. That a forgiven killer is as innocent in God's eyes as a forgiven adulterer, as a child who has never sinned. That's a hard concept to wrap my head around.

Maybe it wasn't that his death was too easy after all, but that death for the rest of us is just too hard. Many of us don't get the chance to make peace with our family, time to seek salvation and forgiveness for our souls. We die suddenly from strokes and heart attacks, from someone's mistake on the highway, from violence -- from the mortal fallout of living in this world.

So this week, I've been working within myself to find the person who would answer yes to that man on his dyin' day. The person who would pray with him and share his last meal.

Because I know that every day I touch the hands of a sinner, even if they're only my own.