afterlife

Afterlife

Looking up, as I lay there in the throes of death, I see the face of an angel staring down at me behind a white veil. As the veil drops slowly away from her face, my beautiful wife May is looking at me, her eyes pleading with me to just hang on a little longer. This is the woman who was like a shining light when she came into my life 38 years ago. The light has only become brighter as the years have gone by. My only regret is that I never shared my appreciation of the way I feel about her. Verbalizing my emotions has always been difficult. It is something that I have been working on for a long time, to no avail. I have always found it uncomfortable simply giving someone I really care for a hug. It has always been my nature to keep my emotions in check, and not let people see how I feel.
Looking over May’s left shoulder I can see a strong young man trying to comfort her, and I recognize my son Eric trying to hold his own emotions in check. I can only hope that someday Eric finds some of the things in me that I admired so much in my father. One of the things I learned about Eric when he was young is that if I gave him a task to do, and let him work at his own pace, his way, he usually did a better job than I would have.
I look past Eric seeing my youngest daughter Nikki with tears streaming down her face holding tightly to my hand as if she were afraid she would lose me like a little child in a crowd of people. Nikki and I are the most alike in a spiritual, emotional way, only she does not fear showing her emotions. She is smart, creative, and Daddy’s little girl. She carries the best qualities of both her mother and father.
Behind Nikki is my second daughter, Jenny, trying to be like her father, and not show her real emotions, but it is not working, and I can see she is ready to break down. Jenny is the physical embodiment of her father in many ways. She is the jock of the family, has my temper, very impatient, and is just like me, which is why I love her so much.
Next is my oldest daughter Robin, head buried in her hands sobbing uncontrollably. Robin is the firstborn, and that in itself is something special because she had to open all the doors for her siblings to go through. She is strong, independent, and is a bit of a rebel. This has helped her and hurt her in life, but her strong attitude has pulled her through. I am very proud of Robin, and all that she has accomplished.
Behind Robin I see my grandson Joe-his eyebrows squeezed tightly together with a look of horror on his face, as he is the first to realize that the time has come for me to leave. Joe is a tall, handsome young man, the creative thinker of the family. He is very sensitive, thinking about other people’s feelings, always keeping their best interest in mind. Joe will look at something, trying to figure out in his head how it works, or what makes it do that? I expect great things from Joe.
I try to smile bravely at all of them, but a fog comes rolling in the door with everyone fading away in the process, as the room turns dark.
I hear the laughter of children off in the distance. I am being drawn into a dark room as the laughter slowly dissipates. At the far end of the room the door is slightly ajar with the glow of light around the frame of the door. I approach the door slowly; sensing that there is something amiss, the door bursts open and a large black shadow comes through blocking out most of the light. Jumping backward I turn slightly to my right to see a mirror with a little boy about ten years old in the reflection staring back at me. That little boy is me, and a voice goes off in my head saying over and over, “Please don’t hurt me, please don’t hurt me anymore.” The black shadow sheds its cape, revealing a boy about four years older glaring at me, and then he vanishes.
Falling down into a dark abyss in a never-ending spiral, I feel very soiled, and ashamed. With fear running through my veins, my brain says run, only my legs feel like they are stuck in muck and mire at the bottom of a lake. Pulling up with all my strength I break free only to feel something grab my legs. I look down at long slender fingers wrapped around my legs like tiny tree branches, or vines, trailing back into bony arms in the dark. As my eyes adjust to the dark I see the distorted face of my late cousin pulling me down as the dim light above starts to fade away.
Then things start to take shape, and I find myself sitting on a muddy bank next to a small lake with a fishing pole in my hands. Sitting there in total darkness with tall dry grass behind me, the fog starts to roll in from across the lake. It is then that I hear something behind me moving through the shadows closer and closer. I am frozen with fear as it draws near, the noise getting louder until a cacophony is pounding in my brain like a pick-up truck chasing its victim through a cornfield with music from a heavy metal band screaming through the night. I hear the sound of trees crashing down all around me, branches cracking, while off in the distance a glow in the damp night air is moving slowly in my direction. Getting brighter as it comes closer, my mind races as I wonder which will arrive first. The denizen of the night, or the dim light coming to my aid,
My uncle Arnold steps out from behind a tree with a lantern, and asks if everything is all right. I tell him there is something huge coming at us in the bushes. Standing up he quickly moves the lantern, and the circle of light reveals a small box turtle trudging at us smashing down the dry grass as he goes making the noise that my imagination had amplified. My uncle laughs, while everything fades away.
In the gloom, I feel the presence of something swirling around me coming closer and closer, until I feel it passing through me. Just as the spirit is leaving my body it reaches down trying to loosen the tentacles with the vise-like grip on my legs, then the spirit is ripped away falling into the black hole beneath me. Looking down I glimpse the face of my Uncle Arnold, as he disappears into the darkness with his own demons dragging him down into the abyss.
Still being drawn down deeper into the cold, damp darkness, a chill comes over me making my toes feel numb. Blood in my veins and arteries begin to freeze solid, with cold creeping up to my heart like a crack when you step on the thin ice of a small lake. I am breathless as intense cold enters my calf, then my thigh, and finally my chest creating intense pain. Looking down at my chest the skin, and muscle fall away into small flakes of snow. My frozen outer rib cage falls away like an iceberg from a huge glacier, exposing my chest cavity, which is frosting over with icicles forming on my remaining ribs. A hand reaches up from the pit of my stomach into my chest; cold fingers of ice encircling my heart compressing, until it feels like my heart will explode. My head starts spinning as I feel myself starting to black out. Suddenly a warm, gentle, tropical breeze blows through my hair as the presence of another being floats nearby. As I struggle to regain my senses, the entity touches me chasing the cold down from whence it came. The fire inside me is moving like the fast flow of lava down a steep mountainside.
As warmth returns the darkness opens up like a curtain and the scene of an old cabin on top of a huge sand dune overlooking a large body of water comes to view. Floating through the walls of the cabin as if going through a waterfall, I find two white French doors open at the far end of the room. Through the doors an old woman is toiling over a hot, old-fashioned kerosene cook stove. On the table directly behind her are two bowls, one almost empty, the other full of fresh picked blackberries. The old woman turns and looks at me with a huge smile offering me a taste of the blackberry jam she is making. The warm delicious jam is the best I have ever known; and I thank Olga Murdoch, my grandmother.
When I was a small child she would make jellies and jams for my cousin Jimmy and I at our cottage in Hagar Shores Michigan. This was the cottage that my father and his brother Earl built in the late twenties or early thirties during the depression. They used stained glass windows from an old broken down speakeasy, and even used the dance floor from the place, along with burned boards salvaged from buildings in the Chicago area. During the depression when money and jobs were hard to come by, they scrounged whatever materials they could to build the little 20x30 cabin by the lake. If all the great memories of this place were written into a book, it would fill volumes. This little cabin has brought a tremendous amount of joy to people for over 80 years thanks to my Dad & Uncle Earl.
As Olga’s spirit leaves me, she reaches down and pulls away some of the fingers around my left leg, then smiling she disappears up toward the dim receding light.
The change sends me into a cartwheel over and over while still being pulled down. Immediately a force pulls me back to an upright position while still being dragged down into the abyss by the cold fingers holding my ankles. Something is placed in my left hand, and looking at it I see a piece of wood. As I take a closer look, the wood slowly takes the shape of a baseball bat. Holding the other end of the bat is an elderly gentleman with a great deal of gray hair. The image clears, as Leif Emmerling my Grandfather stands there facing me. He gave me a baseball bat as a small child, which was one of the bats that he made for a baseball team in Ohio. Leif managed a baseball team at the pottery where they made fine china, and would play other companies in the area. He looks at me then voices a command into my brain “Swing son! Swing the bat!” I swing the bat down at the tentacles wrapped around my ankles, only to have a black shadow come from the obscure night and bump my arm, making me miss my intended target and lose my grip, hurling the bat through the darkness. In an instant, my grandfather was gone, leaving me again falling down into the cold black hole below.
Now, during what seems like an eternity of falling, another presence is felt rushing toward me. I feel a hand of steel grip my arm.
This apparition is of a kind and gentle soul with the strength of a giant. This spirit is that of my grandfather, Emmit Mustoffa, my mother’s stepfather who worked in his early years digging out the tunnels for the subways of Chicago, giving him his strength. He was the gentlest man I have ever known with the strength of a four men. I remember when I was a teenager he would go down into the basement of the four flat where we lived in Chicago, and spend all day digging the clay out with a shovel to make the basement larger. Emmit was over sixty years old by then, but still as strong as an ox. He lived with us about 15 years after his wife Mary, my Grandmother died. He was from Turkey, and had a thick accent. When he was not digging in the basement he would spend a couple days a week at a coffee shop with his Turkish friends. My favorite thing was when he used to call me mister Bob. He would always address my friends & I as mister before our first names, and this only made my friends & I love him even more.
As Emmit is pulled away, he reaches down with a vicious swing knocking away the hand from my left leg, while his spirit starts to take on another shape.
I feel a warm sensation, and the smell of fresh flowers permeates the air as this spirit overtakes my body. Then, in my mind I envision rectangular pieces of cardboard floating by, turning over and over as they go, exposing dots or symbols on one side. I glimpse a small shape of a heart, then a diamond. As if by magic, it becomes clear that they are playing cards being dealt by my grandmother, Mary Emmerling, who I used to play crazy eights with as a child. The spirit of my grandfather Emmit and grandmother Mary were so close that they come together as one entity. My Grandmother loved to play cards, but hated to lose. When I was learning how to play I would watch my Grandfather Emmit, let her win without her knowing it. This was the kind of man he was, and I really looked up to him.
As my grandmother is drawn away I feel the grip on my right ankle loosen slightly. Immediately, a feeling of love overwhelms me, to a gentle hand stroking the top of my head smoothing my hair back into place.
The apparition of my mother, Mabel Murdoch, smiling at me appears, and reaches down removing the remaining hand ever so gently, leaving the perpetrator to fall away screaming into the depths of despair. My mother who was burned very badly on her neck and chest when she was 5 yrs old always treated people with kindness. I remember several homeless people that Mom and Dad had taken in and helped get their lives back together. Smiling she leaves me, and ascends up toward the dim light.
Now I am left floating, not going up or down, just floating. Drifting along, looking for some kind of direction, I feel another spirit rushing to me. With visions of super heroes going through my head, I am pulled up toward the faint spec of white light above me. The spirit drawing me up in the darkness with super strength looks at first like Walter Payton, morphing into Audi Murphy, the world war II hero, changing again, into the my true hero, Lester Murdoch my father, and we ascend toward the brilliant illumination above. At last I feel safe with the help of my father. He was a genius at jerry rigging things to make them work. If anyone would be called MacGyver’s father (after the TV character) it would be my Dad. He taught me so much by the things he did rather than the things he said, that I am very proud to be called his son.
As I ascend upward, a second presence comes to me with a love and understanding that I have not felt for a long time. Then the spirit engulfs me, at which point I greet my sweet sister, Alice, as my upward travel moves even faster. Alice is my older sister who was always my rock whenever I needed to talk to someone. She was always there for me no matter what the problem. In her left hand she was holding the hand of a little boy who looked at me with his big brown eyes and a silly little grin, and I felt my heart growing bigger. This is Chris, Alice’s son who died when he was 13 years old. Chris who before I had a family filled a place in my heart that eventually would be opened for my children. He was like a son to me, and now I can feel that part of me becoming whole again. Still traveling up I move through the brilliant light into an area with colors of majestic beauty surrounding me. I can actually feel the colors as each one touches me. This elicits an emotion as each color embraces my whole body. With every color I feel immersed in a different emotion, love, passion, contentment, satisfaction, energy, inner strength, and on and on.
Then, there flashes into my mind, images of every food I have ever desired, and my taste buds explode with pleasure. Never have I tasted a pizza so good or a strawberry so sweet. The thought of food still lingering, a jungle appears, and I sense something in the brush stalking its prey. Patiently creeping forward, it slowly gains a position of attack. Then in a flash a great shadow is moving toward me at a high rate of speed like a giant cat. It is then I feel two giant paws push down on my shoulders, and a soft, wet material with the texture of sandpaper wipes across my face, flooding me with a feeling of companionship and loyalty. As I wipe away the dampness from my face, a huge shaggy mane appears in front of me. I recognize Jade, my Siberian husky, licking me, beaming with joy at our reunion, oblivious to the thought of food, which had consumed her throughout her life. Her only desire now was to be with me.
In an instant, happy, lively spirits engulf me from everywhere, lost but not forgotten friends and family embrace me. The joy and pure happiness is overwhelming. They come to me not in human form, but as a soft light with an aura of colors around them. When we first meet I can visualize how I remember them at the moment in our lives when I was privileged to see the best of who they were. Each one comes with different colors, and varying degrees of intensity. Alice comes to me with my mother and Chris with colors of love, compassion, and trust. Mary, Emmit, and Leif come as one sharing in their love, understanding, and I feel they are proud of me. Olga brings me energy, and a feeling of youthfulness. Jade has companionship with her. I understand the intensity is determined by the goodness they passed on to me. Coming now in the brightest light of all with a rainbow of colors; again I am overwhelmed by Love, Understanding, Loyalty, Honor, an array of emotions as I greet my father.
As I am flooded with the greatness of all the people, as I realize this is what we are living for! If we embrace the good things that we are exposed to from family and friends, then this comes back to us in the afterlife to help us through the difficult times. If you let the evil or bad things influence your life, there will not be enough goodness left to break the chains of evil as it pulls you down into the cold, black abyss.

Robert Murdoch 12/17/07