Is There Life After Death?
First: there's Max
It's not a spoiler that Max dies. As a matter of fact, his death is at the center of nearly everything in my first book, with only his love for a special man taking the top position. He had everything going his way. For the first time ever, he was truly in love. So when he faced death, here's what he thought about it:
When you're gone, you're gone. When you die, you are like the monsters killed on the TV Show 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'. You turn into dust and you're no more.
Somewhere in the Bible it says everyone comes from dust, and to dust you return. There's no coming back to fight another day. There's zero, nada, nothing waiting for you. No bright lights. No pearly gates. You are no more. Poof. It's the end of the line.
But if that's what you believe, when it happens, do you take it like a pill that must be taken? Or do you fight to live another day? Or do you hope there is another day with perhaps another life?
A 2025 Pew Research Center survey found that in nearly every country surveyed, at least half of adults believe there is definitely or probably life after death. In the United States, it's 70 percent.
What that existence consists of depends on what you believe.
What About Me
I grew up with a different world view. I was raised Catholic believing a person could pray to the saints who could intercede on our behalf. Who were these saints? Good people who performed miracles and are no longer alive. Somehow they died. It's that last part that got my attention. If they were dead and could still help people that were alive, that meant they still existed.
But apart from religions saying life continues after death, my question was always, where's the proof? Now I know Christians say that Jesus being raised from the dead is proof, but has there been anyone since then?
Do I have a neighbor whose uncle died and later showed up for work (and wasn't a zombie)? Not a one. And what about those individuals whose hearts stopped on the operating table, but who were revived and later described what they experienced? I have to ask, were they really dead, or did the medical staff jump to a conclusion too quickly?
Reincarnation
Millions of people around the world believe death isn't the end of a life, but the beginning of another one.
I remember when Shirley MacLaine wrote her book telling about her strongly held belief that she has lived past lives, including as a Moorish girl, a Buddhist monk, and a court jester. She has been born again...and again...and again. Did she have proof? She wrote it all down in her book. To be honest with you, dear reader, I never read it.
There is the University of Virginia: The Division of Perceptual Studies. For more than fifty years, researchers there have collected over 2,500 cases involving young children who reported memories of previous lives. In many of those cases, details the children gave corresponded with the life of an actual person who had died. I've read some of them. I find them convincing.
So Where Do I Land
I write paranormal romance novels about couples who meet, fall in love, and are separated by death. But like all good romance novels, each novel has a happy ending. I use reincarnation as the tool, but it's their love that makes it happen.
So, is there life after death? I can't prove there is. I can't prove there isn't. But I've spent a lot of time writing about what might happen if death isn't the end. And somewhere along the way, I realized I hope there is.
Even Max, as convinced as he was about death being final, gets his happy ending. How? Well, that's the story.
What about you? Do you believe there's life after death?
Mj