The Truth About Life After Death

 Death was not good to my mother. 

Shortly before she died, surrounded by myself and my siblings, I heard a distinctive male voice say, 'Come on dear'. The voice spoke unmistakably in the accent of my father's hometown. So naturally, I assumed - for I believed in such things at the time - that he had come to take her to the 'other side'. 

Though none of my siblings reported hearing the voice, I was comforted by hearing it, as seconds later she slipped away. At last, I thought, she would be reunited with my father who had died 22 years before, just four years into their marriage. 

She had never really recovered from that blow. And looking at old pictures of them, I can see why. Mother was a classical beauty, who would not have looked out of place on a film set. My father also had film star looks. Think Rock Hudson meets Cary Grant when both were in their prime to get an idea of his features. Back that up with wartime service in British Special Forces and you will see why he could have out-Bonded James Bond. 

Unfortunately, when she got to the Pearly Gates, her dreams of a happy and blissful reunion were cruelly shattered. For the voice I'd heard was not that of my paternal GRANDFATHER, who like my mother's father had died some 20 years before they'd married. He’d come to break the news to my mother that my father would not be spending eternity with her, but with the woman he had wanted to marry before meeting my mother. 

You see, when he was 18, my father was madly in love with the bosses' daughter at the factory where he worked as a boiler stoker. Outraged that his refined daughter should take up with an 'oik' like my dad, he sent her off to Switzerland where, tragically, a month later she died in a skiing accident. This prompted my grief-stricken father to volunteer for the Royal Marines, where he was transferred to the Special Boat Service (SBS) within a year.  

Naturally then, the moment he died from cancer aged just 35, he made a beeline for her and they have been together ever since. My mother has also been paired off, with the boy she met when she was 14, who had also died young. But happy though she is, truth is, she would REALLY like to be reunited with my father. 

When I tell this story to religious preachers, particularly street based preachers, the first thing they do is laugh at me and ask me how I know this. My reply is very simple. "I know this, because I know exactly the same about the afterlife as you, which is precisely NOTHING. 

That’s not STRICTLY true. During my time as a Spiritualist Medium, I got to chat to a fair number of corpses. Life is wonderful up there, they all told me. Even murderers and rapists get forgiven and some even make friends with their victims. Occasionally the odd murder victim even pops down to earth to whisper their killers name in some Medium's ear so they can make a few shillings selling 'psychic detective' stories to the tabloids.  

Ummm, no, they do not. Neither I, nor any ‘medium’ has ever REALLY spoken to a dead person, no matter what anyone claims. I could explain what I think happens, but magician Derren Brown’s You Tube videos will tell you all you need to know for now.

Fact is, we know diddly squat about ‘life’ after ‘death’. People of faith might disagree. But the weight of faith does not compare with the weight of EVIDENCE that when humans die, that’s it. There is no heaven, no hell, just the prospect of becoming a lump of coal around a million years after you pop your clogs.

So that is why we need to make the best of the only life we KNOW we have. This one. We need to do as much good as we can. Not for any hope of reward, but as it says in a song, for no other reason than to ‘be good for goodness’s sake.