Moving on...

Today as I pulled into my driveway coming home from work, I looked up at the clouds before closing my moon roof and jumped. They were moving so fast that I thought I had forgotten to put it in park and was about to run into the garage. Then I realized it was the clouds moving, not me, and laughed at myself.

Being the lucky Floridians that we are, we were served another gorgeous day filled with rain and sun. So, again my poor dirty house got put on the back burner, and I grabbed my book and my hammock and headed out the door. I couldn't even read for the first few minutes, I was just stunned at how fast the clouds were passing through. I've been reading a lot about different theories of life after death, including studies on near death experiences and reincarnation. These types of ideas have always intrigued me since the days when my dad got me hooked on the show Unsolved Mysteries, the best show ever.

You know, when I started this little crusade of finding out more about death, it was terrifying and depressing. I read books about murder and the Holocaust and slavery. I was certain that mankind was going to soon implode from its centuries-old habit of conspiring with evil. But lately as I've read books that are focused more on the actual process of dying rather than the cause of death, I have been lifted. Then, last night I actually had the opportunity to speak to someone who has experienced it firsthand.

We get a lot of Mayo Clinic patients at the hotel where I work, and last night I received a call from a lady wanting to make a reservation for her transplant checkup. I'm not quite sure how or why but we ended up on the phone for over a half hour, and the entire time I was wishing beyond hope that the phone wouldn't ring and no one would come to the desk. I didn't want to stop talking to her. She told me of her heart failure and her estimated life expectancy that she had passed up 4 years ago. She told me of how she just wanted to hold on until her son turned 18. She told me about her transplant surgery and about how the new organ failed her. She told me how she had died. She had died and seen her son. She went to him and yelled and yelled at him to turn around and go back to the hospital he had just left, but he couldn't hear her. She yelled, but he just sat there crying silently. And then she came back.

Whether one chooses to believe in reincarnation or near death experiences or not, it is most certain that we move from one realm to this one to another. The question that hit me today as I was watching the clouds was- am I moving through this world as I have always believed, or is this world moving through me?


I noticed today that we now sell Jones Soda in our hotel market. I'd heard that you can submit photos for their labels, so I visited their website. They have some really great photography on there! I had so much fun looking through all the photos and voting on my favorites. You should check it out. I am definitely going to work on some to submit. Maybe this one!

jonessoda.com