Thinkin' 'Bout the Afterlife

If there's an afterlife, will I see my old golden retriever? And will we be able to communicate? At first blush, this sounds like the greatest, coolest thing ever. I still miss that dog, thinking about her even this morning as I drove to work, and she's been gone since the summer of 1998. She was a great dog, the best I've ever had, and I really do miss her.

But if we're reunited in the afterlife, what are we going to talk about? I'll pet her and hug her, and then she'll ask me why I left her with the in-laws when I had to leave the country for a year and a half, and she died without ever seeing me again. She'll ask me why I didn't take her along, if I thought that highly of her. Being as smart as I always gave her credit for, she'll really press me, and I expect that she'll probably be pretty huffy about it, maybe even downright pissed off. Do I really want that in the afterlife?

If the afterlife is about paradise, are we all in for these kinds of confrontations? I'll be reunited with my grandmother, an absolute saint and probably one of the best and most kind humans I've ever encountered, and that will be really great, but what are we going to talk about? Will I tell her about my college partying, and that post-tequila morning when I woke up literally in my own squat and urine, my face molecularly bonded to a table with my own sick? Uh, probably not, right? Will she talk to me all about her ladies group up there in the afterlife, the celestial quilts they've been making? Yeah, maybe, but I don't think I could bear eternity hearing about that.

Will I find my beloved lost pocket knife in the afterlife? Or will I at last know where it went? Will I find out if that 4th grade buddy really did steal my money that day or not (I STILL suspect him, the bastard!)? Will I get the readout of all of the men my ex-wife slept with while married to me? Will I really even care about that?

Will I get to know the answers to all of the mysteries that Life held? Who killed JFK? Why can't Madonna act? Where's Elvis? What happened to Amelia Earheart? What is the formula for Coca-Cola? Where and who and what was the Missing Link? Why can't the French be civil and polite? Nessie and Bigfoot and Sasquatch and Yeti? Where's Marcos' and Cortez's gold? What is the one true religion? What is our purpose?

And is there a gatekeeper for the answers to these secrets/mysteries? Do I have to grease a celestial palm or kiss a galactic ass to get an answer? If so, how and who and why?

If there's an afterlife, maybe I can get off the planet and do a bit of exploring. I'd love to see the surface of the planets, pick up and toss a moon rock, ride a comet around the sun, see if there if life on Mars or Titan or Europa or Io. Then zap on out of the solar system and go exploring through the galaxy a bit. But how do I get there? Do I physically move, or do I just wish it/think it, and bam I'm there? How fast do I go? How fast does a 'soul' travel? Is it instantaneous, or is it the speed of life, or a scientifically realistic near-speed of light? If I don't know what's out there in the universe, how can I just zap myself to that place? If I don't know the destination, then how do I get there? If I'm traveling at the speed of light, it's going to take 50,000 years just to get to the center of the galaxy. We're talking eternity, after all, so it's not like I'm on a schedule, but I think there'd be ample time in there to develop just a small bit of boredom. I mean, will there be an in-flight movie? Chips and soda? Some board or card games to keep me occupied?

If I'm out there in space, bopping around as a soul, what if I do encounter extraterrestrial, that is, other-than-Earthly life? Do they get souls, and will we meet up in the post-life ether? Do we communicate, or do we fight?

If there's an afterlife, I'd love to see a black hole, or at least get a feel for what one might manifest itself as. If I'm a soul, do I escape the gravity of a black hole, or do I get sucked through? If so, where do I end up? In another heaven, the Evil Heaven? Is the soul vulnerable to the tidal and gravitational and energy forces and levels that exist out there in the greater universe? Will I be okay?

And then where does the universe end? Can I wish or zap my soul-self to the physical end of the universe? If so, what's there? Is it endless blackness, just space where the physical remnants of the Big Bang have yet to spread? Where does it end? Or if it doesn't end, do I get the answer to my question of why? Do any of my questions get answered? If so, who does the answering?

And do I get to move around in time in the afterlife? Can I move forward or backward in time? Does time have any meaning at all to an eternal soul? Can I pop myself back to the beginning of time and witness the Big Bang? Can I see what it was all about before there was a reality, before a universe existed?

In all of this I wonder about the existence of God; how can you help it? Does God run this big post-life show as well? If so, doesn't that make him awfully busy? Too many questions, with no indications of any answers at all, nothing to offer but "Just believe," and "Have faith." Sorry, but that's just not good enough. Until the Hubble Space Telescope returns a photo with a benevolent paternal face peering back at us through the countless eons of time and reality, I'll just have to keep asking and hoping for some kind of validation some day.

But I don't think it will happen.