One of the Things That Happen When We Die

Did you ever wonder what happens when we die? It’s a question we could fill a book with. Of course, we’ll never really know until we get there. And as they say in the Old West: Dead men tell no tales. Now there are those who’ve had experiences when they were in a dead state. By this I am referring to Near Death Experiences where the heart has stopped along with the breathing for some length of time before resuscitation took hold and the heart and lungs resumed their functioning. The person was then brought back from being technically dead. And there are many who have experienced such tragedies and came back to tell of the experience. And I am one of those people, which gives me a perspective shaped by experience.

But still. What really happens? Is there anything concrete that those who are left behind can see, hear, or feel when someone dies? Anything?

My family has a quirky thing that happens when someone dies. When someone dies in my family, those who remain living typically feel a rustling of leaves and warm breezes wherever they are at the moment of passing or soon thereafter. It’s almost as if the spirit passed through and left a final calling card before bidding the remaining family members adieu. I can think of several occasions when, at the moment I learned that some relative or close family member died, there was some “thing” that happened, and all these “things” were each subtly different from one another.

My grandmother died some years ago. It was a mild spring morning when I got the news. I was still in bed trying to get that last bit of sleeping in. The phone rang and I heard my wife answer from the kitchen. I could tell from the tone and volume of her voice it was someone from New Jersey, home. Once the hellos were completed, the conversation turned quiet, and within a minute or two I heard my wife walking up the stairs to the bedroom loft. She handed me the phone while gently telling me that my grandmother had passed away. My grandmother raised me when I was a child. I took the phone and my aunt gave me the details. A short, quick call that I would return later once I was up and about. I hung up the phone, and that’s when I felt it.

The bedroom loft was once the attic. There were windows at either end. Both windows were closed. It was a mild spring morning, and the baseboard heat never engaged. Yet, coming from nowhere was the breeze. A soft, warm, calm blow that swept through the loft and left a visible rustling of my wife’s hair. We both felt the breeze and gave each other a questioning look. The breeze carried an aroma of Grandma’s kitchen, what sure smelled like Italian tomato sauce, what we called gravy, simmering on the stove.

Next, it was my cousin Kenny who passed away just a few years ago. I loved Kenny. He took me in for a summer and got me hooked up with my first summer job. We both had to lie about my age. I was fifteen. One had to be sixteen to work in the boardwalk arcades. Telling them I was sixteen was his idea. Little did we know that thirty years down the road he’d be the chief of police of that boardwalk and town. He also helped my son when he was a young man wanting to get away from home and get an education. Kenny set him up well enough in the beginning that my son, Jason, went on to get his MBA at a prestigious college all on his own.

That was Kenny for you. Family first, and generosity was the rule that he lived by. And perhaps that is why I found my relationship with him frustrating. He was generous, loving, and loyal with family and those he knew. Yet he was intolerant of almost all races. He also believed in the either/or distinction that people are either criminals or they’re cops. Everyone had done something illegal at some point, so they were no less a criminal. They just never got caught. My relationship with him was fraught with conflicts regarding his perceptions, and this frustration lasted the last ten years of his life.

One afternoon I was sitting on the couch at home, idling my time away doing nothing, when my mobile phone vibrated with a text notification. The text was from my son. He never left the East Coast where he attained his MBA and lived close by the cousins. Jason texted me. I pulled out my phone from my pocket and opened the messaging app. There were two sentences. As I read the first, a sudden, thundering clang came from the dining room, something heavy hitting the table. “What was that!” I jumped off the couch and ran into the dining room. The chandelier that hung from the ceiling over the center of the dining room table had fallen. It landed on the table, and several of its globes were broken. The table had several divots and pits from the force. The hook that had held the chandelier for the last 24 years since this house was built failed at that exact moment I was reading the message from my son. I learned of Kenny’s passing when I read the second sentence, immediately after inspecting the crashed chandelier. The whole message read: “Some news from the family that I have to tell you.” Space. Space. “Cousin Kenny died this morning in the hospital after his heart surgery.”

Regardless of the theories about what happens when we die, there’s one thing I know through sound, sight, and feeling. When any of my family members pass from this world to the next, they stop by for one final look and parting before they step off this world and go on up to heaven.