7 Minutes...

I have been reading a lot about death lately, for obvious reasons.  It isn’t like I haven’t known most of what I have currently read, it is just that it never really applied to me in any real way.  Everyone close to me that has died, has died far away from me, and my up close personal experience with death has been distant and unknown.  

Today, I am living the dying process every day and it is a lot of mixed emotions, a lot of ups and downs.  It feels hard to say but watching someone die is both sublime and brutal.  Yesterday was brutal.  My dad was agitated and restless.  He keeps whispering to people we cannot see and having these amazing conversations with them.  While with us, he cannot really communicate.  Which feels unfair and a little cruel.  I know it isn’t deliberate and I am not upset about it, it just feels unfair that the imaginary people get to talk to him and he to them, while we remain witnesses only.  I know nothing about death is really fair...so I have adjusted my expectations accordingly.

Yesterday was brutal for me.  He kept trying to get out of bed.  He was whispering and talking a great deal, flailing his hands and reaching for things we cannot see.  It was hard to watch.  He also has become combative when they have to change him or adjust him in anyway.  That is also hard to watch.  He has been so agreeable for the last few years, it is hard to watch this more pissed off and angry version of him return.  I guess in some way it is comforting, because he is still him even as his mind goes.  Nice to know that some things remain even amidst chaos and dying.

I have read about the 7 minutes after death, when the heart has stopped beating but the brain remains active.  There is this “7 minute” period where scientists believe the brain finishes processing the life just ended.  This is what we might refer to as the life review or the flashback.  This idea and concept brings me immense comfort.  I’m so glad that science has backed my life long theory that this last gasp brain function provides us time to review our lives. I think this is so important to me because if there is any heaven or hell, I believe we find it here, when our last conscious memories and thoughts are processed leaving us with either a feeling of calm equanimity (heaven) or a regretful disgust (hell).

For me, this information gave me permission to accept what is currently happening more deeply.  I have been worried that what I see him doing now is his life’s review and it doesn’t appear to be leading to anywhere good.  So I am grateful to know, that to some degree and extent, when his heart stops beating, his brain will be able to provide clarity for him to leave with his idea that his life was heaven.  And I am not going to think about if he lands on the hellish conclusion.

The Science:

“Seven minutes after death (when the heart stops), the brain remains active for a short period, showing organized brainwave activity linked to memory, perception, and dreaming, suggesting a final "life review" or "flashback" as cells die from lack of oxygen, a phenomenon that aligns with near-death experiences and scientific findings from dying brain recordings, though the exact experience remains speculative.  In essence, the "seven minutes" refers to the brief, last burst of organized brain function as it shuts down, potentially creating a vivid, memory-filled experience just before complete brain death.” (AI)

The body and mind never cease to amaze me!

I am glad we get this review.  I have always been worried that if you died tragically and suddenly, that you would miss your window and be deprived this final review.  I am super relieved to hear that the review happens AFTER the heart stops beating.  I cannot tell you how much relief that provides me! I know, weird, but if you are a regular reader, you already know this about me.

I need him to get a review.  I need to know he will get a chance to leave us and move forward into whatever heaven or hell awaits him.  I need to know that he gets to decide this for himself.  That there is no final arbiter other than him.  I have no idea why this is so important to me.  Perhaps it is this final act of control the mind exerts.  I have spent so much of my life living in my head, overthinking everything.  I think perhaps, it is that I would personally feel so short changed if my mind didn’t get the last say over my body.  I just need the mind to have the final word, I guess. Not just for me, but for all of us.

I love that it is referred to as “7 minutes” because the number 7 is super special to me.  I have it tattooed on my hand.  I am a 7 on the enneagram, and I suspect my dad was also.  He might have been a 1 or 5...but I am thinking 7 is where he lived.  So the fact that there are 7 minutes for the final life review to occur, means something to me.

“The number 7 symbolizes completeness, perfection, wisdom, and spiritual insight across many cultures, religions, and numerology, appearing in concepts like the 7 days of the week, 7 colors of the rainbow, and 7 deadly sins, representing a deep search for truth, hidden meanings, and divine connection, while also appearing in psychological studies (Miller's 7 +/- 2) and folklore.”  (AI - do we have to cite to AI?  I mean, isn’t it kind of a collective consciousness now?  Do we have to give the robots credit?  Anyway, I don’t want to piss them off so here is the credit they are due...).

So I like very much that we relegate 7 minutes to the flashback of your life.  And if you have ever attempted to sit still, 7 minutes is not a small amount of time, especially when your heart is no longer beating.

I also like the knowledge that death doesn’t just happen when the heart gives out.  My own heart having had way too much control (and sometimes not enough) in my life.  I really like that the brain has the final say.  It is weird how much comfort it gives me. I guess, when faced with death and dying, we find comfort, solace and wisdom in strange places.  I am grateful that we can make sense out of anything at all.

So when my dad goes, I am going to do my best to be there for his 7 minutes.  To hold his hand and let him know he is not alone, that his life’s review is something I can bear witness to as well.  I guess, if I am honest, part of me thinks he might come up short and so I want to be there to help in any way I can.  He was not an easy man for much of his life.  Driven, exacting and hard charging.  He once taught me how to mop a floor.  It took like an hour...it was one room, a tiny room.  I remember thinking, “no one has time for this level of detail!”  [I was 9 or 10 and I was just completely blown away by his expectations, his knowledge of floor mopping and his complete inability to see that a 9 year old didn’t give any fucks at all about how well a floor was mopped.  The incongruence of him and his expectations and my inability and unwillingness to meet those expectations would be a lifelong struggle for both of us.  Also, I was already slave at that time to my own unrealistic expectations, knowledge and detail orientation for him and myself.  I couldn’t pay attention to him because I was already being ruled by my own interior thoughts on subjects way more important than floor mopping.]

I digress...

Anyway, I am grateful for the 7 minutes we get no matter how we die.  And yes, I know, this is not really a guarantee so much as it is a suggestion, an idea, a theory.  But for me, at least now, it is law.  We all get it no matter what.  I need it.  I want it.  And I want him to have it.  And I want it to be untethered from all the reality being tethered to a mortal host provides. I want him to be free to see all, be all and review all.  I want him to be able to gain that divine knowing that I believe happens upon death.  The life, fractured off, as it rejoins the energy of one, should get a final review of its individual life before it rejoins the force, Divinity or whatever you might like to call it.  Otherwise, what was the point?

I feel like we are all extensions of this God consciousness.  And we are splintered off at birth, largely forgetting that we were ever part of a collective whole.  And we live as though we are the only ones who matter a great deal of the time.  So I love the idea that we fracture off but then always are returned to the energy that creates everything.  But I, for my own sanity and wellbeing, need to know, believe or trust that before we are reassimilated back into this amorphous whole, our lives are given meaning and purpose and stand for something.  That upon our final review, we are able to ascertain whether we used our time wisely or if we wasted it.  And I believe this is a vital part of the process so that when our energy is remixed in the great mixing bowl of creation, we can do better next time.  And if we don’t get the chance to review our lives and come up with our heaven or hell about it, how will we ever do better next time?  And, given our world today, this is something I believe all of us should be worried about.  Too much living like hell is the only reality in my opinion.  We all need to do better lest it be our end as a species.

I have some pretty far flung ideas, I am aware.  But, as I said above, it is law for me.  This is the process I believe in and align my life with daily.  I believe the divine is in everything we do, say, feel, think.  And for us to leave this consciousness without a final review, seems like some sort of cosmic unfairness that can never be righted.

Or perhaps, this human life is really just some alien experiment that when we die we just go back to the planet we came from and go on living as the aliens we are.  I mean, fuck, I really don’t know.  Anything is really possible.  But that thought overwhelms me so I like this one, this 7 minute review one, better.  I have no idea whether it is valid.  But the thing about faith is that validity is not required.  There is no proof with faith.  It is based on intuition and feeling and belief.  Facts are unimportant when it comes to faith, we believe whatever we believe no matter how erroneous or off it may be.  Faith is largely based on fiction and stories and ideas, but fuck, it works when nothing else does.  And I have no idea why.  I just know that faith has led me through some pretty harrowing times, not unlike now, where everything I think and feel is swayed, tossed about and wrecked.  Faith works...no matter what I believe, and without concern for accuracy or factual basis. 

And as my father lays dying, I need that belief...and I need to know the 7 minutes will occur for us all.

Again, still...