And then what?
“What are we doing here? What is the purpose of all this? What happens after this?” asks Claire Bidwell Smith in her brave and thoughtful new book about her personal journey to understand the mysteries of the Great Unknown.
Smith’s credentials are anything but New Agey, and it’s no wonder that death obsesses her. A critically acclaimed author (“The Rules of Inheritance”), she’s also a respected grief counselor who’s had her own share of horrific losses: Both her parents were diagnosed of cancer when she was just 14, and by the time she was 25, they were gone, along with a beloved young friend. But then Smith marries, and when her daughter is born, she’s faced again with the fragility of life. Adrift, depressed and fearful, without any religious background to bolster belief, she begins to explore life’s essential question: What happens after we die?
Part of what makes Smith’s journey so fascinating is that her mind is so open, even as she grounds her book in healthy skepticism. She’s uncertain about the validity of psychics and mediums, but she goes to them, anyway, including John Edwards, emerging feeling unsettled by an accuracy she can’t explain. Are these people just reading minds or body language? Are they somehow dipping into the future? Or could they really be connecting with the dead?
She goes to a past-life regressionist, and feeling foolish, makes up a past life to appease him, but later, has a vision that feels uncannily meaningful. A seance she holds in her home seems to give no answers, until everyone’s away from the table and ready to go home and then there is a sudden, spooky move of the planchette. The only thing Smith knows for certain is that the deeper she gets into all of this, the calmer she feels.
Smith also delves into scientific research, touching on the groundbreaking studies of Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, and contacting Dr. Julie Beischel at the Windbridge Institute, who conducts controlled studies on mediums. Beischel’s data seems to prove that mediums are reporting accurate and specific information, but more than that, Beischel also speculates that a positive meeting with a psychic medium could have “stronger healing effects on the grief process than tradi- tional psychotherapy” because while psychotherapy often encourages people to move on, a visit with a medium allows people to acknowledge the presence of their dead and still feel connected in some important way.
Smith’s voice is so assured, so curious, that it’s impossible not to want to follow her wherever she might lead us, from organized religion to shamanism to science. Her only misstep is her loving, advice-full letters to her two young daughters, sprinkled through the book, meant to be available to her girls when they are adults or after she is gone, as a way to let them know she’s still with them. Every time these epistles appear, her search stalls, and though the letters are eloquent, our attention wanes.
So does Smith really have answers for readers about what happens after death? Maybe. Maybe not. Nevertheless, it’s impossible not to feel inspired by her search and the possibilities she presents. We are more than just our bodies, she insists. Death is a transition to another mode of existence. “There is no such thing as goodbye.”
No matter what you believe, Smith makes it clear that pondering the meaning of death “has an enormous impact on how we live our lives.” And what she leaves us most with is a sense of wonder about the unknown and a shining kind of hope.