The Source of Our Heritage

It seems that as part of our community ages, its members begin to confront the inevitable. The days of worrying about jobs and partners are fewer. And as the body grows less agile, the inevitability of death comes into focus.

But for me, I have to say that it’s been a little different. Early in the 1980’s I began to spontaneous have memories of many of my past lives. Not names and dates, but general locations and time periods and fleeting glimpses of moments in those lives and a general remembrances of the shape and content of each particular life. In a few of these remembrances, I have had some of the most vivid memories of the moment of my death in that particular life.

For instance, I can still picture the look on the drunk truck driver’s face as his truck hit me when I stepped off the curb as a little old retired school teacher in my last life. And a few other death memories come back to me in the sharpest detail from other past lives.

Frankly, through realizing so many lives and so many deaths, I am not afraid of death. But what does temper me is the preciousness of my life. All of the time I have invested in it; the work I have done so that I could continue it and experience this moment. The great commitments and the sacrifices that I have made, I would not care to try to do this again.

Therefore, I would not throw this life away lightly, nor thoughtlessly.