Do you ever spend time thinking about what’s next? You know what I mean don’t you? Not the Hollywood version. Not the “White Light” people with near death experiences see. I’m talking about the place, wherever that is, where souls go after a person passes.

If no one close to you has ever died, you have no idea what I’m writing about. After death, the spirit somehow leaves the body and goes somewhere. In the next few paragraphs I’d like to ponder where and perhaps fear the consequences.

Can you imagine if your Grandmother really was looking down on you and seeing all of the crazy shit you were doing? What about your father in-law? Holy crap! I’ll bet he’d probably want to punch me in the mouth the day I dropped in on him in the afterlife.  Still, I’d like to sit down and talk to him.  I’d want to know what he’s been up to all of these years.  I’d like to see what he did during his life before I knew him.  I’d want to know how he grew up and what it was like to fight in World War II.  I’d want him to know I’m doing my best with the years I have left on this earth.

Do you think we’ll all be together again?  I’m talking about all of the people you’ve known in your life-like your family and your friends and even your one night acquaintances? Do they count?  You know, the people you meet on the street or at a bar or someone you went to high school with and never saw again.

I’d love it if we had the chance to go back and trace our family’s heritage and see how we evolved from Adam and Eve.  I’d love to know the back story about how I became who I became. I believe in Darwinism. I believe each succeeding generation had to have been pretty goddamn tough to survive the times of their day.  Survival of the fittest isn’t just a phrase, at least not to me.

It would be so great to have the opportunity in the next life to meet the famous people like Gandhi, Lincoln, Jefferson, Churchill, Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King, Jr. Imagine how cool it would be to just have a chat or to have a catch to discuss politics or simply values.  Would they have done anything differently.  That would be one of the first questions I would ask.  What about you?

When I saw the animated movie, “The Book of Life” last year, when Manolo visits The Land of the Remembered, it got me to thinking.  I hope such a place really does exist.  I remember all of the loved ones I’ve lost like my father in law, my Grandparents, my half-brother, my sister, neighbors, friends, parents of friends and my two Labrador Retrievers.  I think about them often.  I think about how they’re doing.  I do hope I do get to see them again.  I can’t believe the end really is the end.