DEATH IS WHEN LIFE BEGINS

Death is when life begins: this concept first entered my consciousness when I had just turned twenty-one.  I'd started a new job in Berne, Switzerland, shortly before my twenty-first birthday and, feeling homesick one day, I chanced into a churchyard nestling withinin the Bernese Oberland.

There, on the grave of a young girl, I read the words: WITH DEATH LIFE BEGINS.

At the time I was somewhat sceptical and felt that perhaps her parents had simply been comforting themselves with the hope that Agnes was continuing her existence elsewhere.  But I never forgot that engraving ... and, with life-experience, perceptions change.

Death is the end of our flesh, yes, and our physical presence.  However, we've simply shed our body in much the way that a caterpillar sheds its chrysalis.  Once the chrysalis has outlived its usefulness, the newly emerging butterfly spreads its wings and experiences wonderful, glorious freedom.

This, I have come over the years to believe, is how our spirit feels when it's set free from the encumbrance of a body.  Yes, emphatically, death is when life begins!