I don't get the custom of looking at dead, embalmed loved ones before they are buried. That corpse is in no way the person I loved when she lived. I'd rather remember her alive and animated.

Mercifully, people planning funerals can omit the public viewing of the dead part, and just have a commemorative ceremony. That's how I'd do it if I believed in funerals.

When I die I'd rather just go quietly with little cost, no unnecessary ceremonies and no delays in disposing my remains. Bake me into bone fragments, pulverize them into dust and toss them into the winds or into the trash. It matters not to me. Whatever may or may not be left of me won't be in that dust, and I won't suffer the embarrassment of anyone seeing me bloated and embalmed. :-)

I read in the news today a young man standing on a mountain top in North Carolina during a rain storm proposed to his girlfriend and lightning boomed out of the sky and killed her.

The injustice of this is incomprehensible to me. The happiest moment of their lives destroyed by a freak accident of nature. I don't believe this was anything like bad karma. I doubt they were bad people getting their payback. I believe sometimes in life random things happen, good and bad. I think it's the "wrong place wrong time" scenario.

More worrisome to me is how will the young man recover from such a terrible loss. That memory will haunt him his entire life. Every time he hears thunder in the sky his heart will break into a million pieces. Memories of that terrifying day will return over and over. He'll see his financee die a thousand times.

Before the paramedics took the financee's body away, the young man put the engagement ring on her finger, a token of never-ending love. Perhaps, as the saying goes, love never dies, and in the place where lightning bolts never strike, this couple will meet again.

Most of the NDEs (Near Death Experiences) I've read mentioned the experiencers seeing loved ones appear from the beyond while they were clinically dead. If these NDEs are real and if you do see dead relatives when you die, what's to prevent seeing dead relatives you don't want to see. For example, an obnoxious relative you couldn't stand when he was alive and you'd hardly want to see when you died.

Here are a couple of theories: (1) Death erases all the negatives in peoples' character. (2) Live a reverse magnetic effect, those you didn't like in life, your dislike repels in death so they cannot enter your space in the beyond.

Neither of those theories satisfy me. The first sounds like magical thinking, but is probably more wishful thinking. The second sounds too good to be true. Just as things will screw up if they can in this life, it wouldn't surprise me if the same applied to the next life, that things are going too good feeling before everything goes south.

The only hope I see is if the Reincarnationists are right, that we keep coming back to earth until we burn off our bad karma and become enlightened. Then plausibly those you disliked on earth before they died, reincarnate before you arrive in the afterlife. And, if perchance they get off that squeaky wheel of rebirth and become enlightened, maybe were you meet them then, their annoying traits would be erased along with their bad karma.

An elderly woman told me about her terminally ill husband who looked at her, said I'm leaving now, and died in that moment.

Thinking about this, I wonder how he knew. Was it intuition? Could he feel the final shut down of his existence? Did he see an inner vision indicating his life had ended? Was he leaving his body at that moment, like you read about in accounts of NDEs (Near Death Experiences)?

I also wonder where he went. Many religions and mystics claim they know the fate of humans after death. These are no assurances to me. Regardless of what is written in the holy books and what the mystics see, neither are bona fide. Words are often wrong. Visions are often illusions. Truths are often falsehoods. And the religious and the mystics, who claim they know, haven't died.

Even NDEs are suspect, brief experiences, many heavenly, some hellish, possibly influenced by religious conditionings and personal beliefs. Perhaps far cries from permanent cessations.

I will say this. According to my mother, before my grandfather died he pointed above his head then passed on. My mother believes he told her he was on his way to heaven. Maybe she was right. Maybe we all go to a better place when we die.

I wonder if some people sense their deaths. I don't mean moments before they die, but days or years ahead of their departure.

I have read people have seen their deaths in dreams. Whether those are urban legends or not, I don't know. I hope those ill-fated dreams are urban legends. It would be awful to see your death in a dream and live fearing the dream would come true.

I guess it wouldn't be so bad if you sensed the day of your death as a child and that day was in your eightieth year. To see it weeks in advance would be another matter, more so if you didn't know whether or not the nightmare would materialize.

I can't recall ever reading anything that seemed credible about an individual sensing death long before they died, but I believe it's possible. I believe the body could send shut down signals to the brain long before it pulled the plug.