3/15/15, KJS

On February 27^th 2015, my Grandmother Esther (Civita) Riley, the nearest thing to a saint I’ll ever know, went straight to heaven.

Two nights before Esther passed my Aunt heard her all night managing the Rosary above the loud breathing of her infected lungs. When she woke, my Aunt was asked why she’d left the big light on in the hallway all night (she hadn’t) and ‘where were all those nice people I just left in that big room?’

This doesn’t validate any feelings of quote unquote heaven for my family or me – it’s simply what we’d expect to happen for Esther: that her 11 brothers and sisters, excited husband, parents and grandparents would ready her for a peaceful transition.

And so the extremely rare showing of three white elder deer at her vacant breakfast window the morning of her passing didn’t surprise us. A few days later I did get goose bumps when after an ice storm left the morning silver there was a tall, bright Cardinal bird, Esther’s long-time favorite, on an icy tree branch outside my window.

Quote unquote humanists or noneists would interpret these not in any way as findings but evidence of invalidated ideologies, saying Grandmas visions were delusions or the hallucinations of a dying cortex repeating the routines of a lifetime. Noneists would say there is no spirit world, and that we perpetuate the idea of a happier, holier place when we die because it makes us feel better – there’s no evidence one can provide outside one’s own belief.

Faith is an illusion then, not unlike the American dream, or any scientific theory that was dis-proven over time, or any fear, really – a truth that becomes stronger, more real, over time.

This all suggests that what’s real is what one believes it to be.

As a person of faith I have to agree, having not seen anything literally that proves there is an afterlife, or even a God; in fact, a lot of anecdotal evidence suggesting there couldn’t be one.