4 - Friday, January 17, 1986 - North Sho

Ca aE

re News

Yel tee fe

MY WIFE’S grandmother, Laura Mcintyre,

died the other day after a long, drawn-out il-

iness.

Towards the end, she
was mostly blind, couldn’t
do anything for herself,

| and was sustained only by
a machine that pumped
oxygen into her.

Her passing reminded
me, as if I needed much
reminding, that there is
More going on in (and
around) life than meets the
eye. There are greater
forces at work, I mean.

A person who was at
Laura’s side during the last
three days reports that she
said she’d had the strangest
experience, not once but
several times, where she
seemed to be floating in the
air, looking down at
herself and the other pa-
tients and the nurses as
they came and went.

clear her spirit was prepar-
ing to leave her body —
practising, if you like.
For telling us about that,
I thank her.
She wasn’t a religious
woman, by any stretch of
the imagination. Neither is

her family. So it is highly

unlikely that she would
have read any of the books
that have come out in the
‘Jast. few -years describing
research done on near-
“death experiences.

In almost every case of

near-death, in which a per- -

son dies, but somehow
“comes back,’’ they report
that the first thing to hap-
pen is that they feel
themselves : leaving . their
bodies, hovering in the air
above.

Thus, it was edsier, when
it came time to tell my
seven-year-old that his
great-grandmother had
died, because I was able. to
report that her spirit had
started moving on even be-
fore she stopped breathing.

The boy nodded sagely.

I added that it was sad
Grandma Laura died, but

Fire causes
minor damage

A SMALL fire did $1,000
damage to a West Van-
couver residence Monday.

A West. Vancouver Fire
Department official said a
fire started at the house at
6434 Bay St. in the morning
when an occupant was al-
tempting to light a fire in the
‘fireplace. ¢

The heat travelled through
a crack in the hearth and a
joist in the fireplace caught
fire.

There was minima! fire
damage but smoke filled the
house. No one was injured.

ADVERTISING
CORRECTION
On page 17 of Wednesday
Jan. 15th North Shore
News, under the headino
Skate, #8 Bauer 92's
sale price should have
been $129.98. We regret
any inconvenience this
may have caused our

customers.

To me, it seems perfectly

it was good news too,
because she had been in a
great deal of pain for a
long, long time, and now
she had been released from
that, set free.

Children are, by nature,
intensely curious about
death. As well they might
be, since it is quite a slap in

. the face to be told that the

party is going to end, no
matter how good or bad
you are,

Yet parents for the most
part, as far as [ can see,
shy away from the topic
even more quickly than
they do from the subject of
sex. |

I find it ironic that there
is such a debate about sex
education in the schools,
yet no one complains about
the utter lack of ‘‘death
education.”’

I take a different tack.

F.om the very first time my
kids expressed any

curiousity about death, I

started talking to them
about it. My position is
that of a more-or-less or-
thodox reincarnationist.

That is, 1 believe that

after one lifetime comes
another. [I’m not at al! cer-
tain that in the long run we
are limited to one planet,
either.
. There are so many times
when I am convinced I
must have landed on this
particular planet by
mistake, that it seems
somehow right (never mind
how irrational it may be)
that the next time, I’ll get
to explore a_ different
world,

The closest 1 have ever
come to any proof of this,
at least for my own
benefit, came when I sub-
mitted to dream-regression
hypnosis, and was plunged
back into various moments
in what seemed to be three
quite different lifetimes.
Of course it could easily

‘— that is, a

have all been a hallucina-
tion. Be that as it may, the
experience did give me a
slightly different slant on
life.

Until then, at a certain
level, life per se had seem-
ed rather useless. That is, 1
found it virtually impossi-
ble to make any sense of
life so long as I continued
to think about a lifetime as
a thing in itself.

If I look at it in the con-
text of a vastly larger event
series of
lifetimes each one having
some bearing on the others
— life becomes much more
interesting, more beautiful.
There is time for meaning

to develop.

I might also add I iden-

‘tify strongly (even though I

personally have even less

‘proof of the truth of the

matter) with the teachings
of Seth,.the disembodied
entity who speaks through
the medium of Jane
Roberts. The Seth books
are the most stimulating
material 1 have yet en-
countered concerning the
mystery of what lies behind
the mask of reality.

In Seth’s view, cach of
us is actually part of a
greater self, an ‘‘Over-
Soul”’ consisting of many
different individuals living
simultaneously in dif-
ferent eras and places,
somehow independent of
time.

At any rate, to return to
my point of ‘‘greater
forces’? at work, a curious
thing happered. The house,
where Laura and her
deceased husband had lived
for many years had been
boarded up quite a while
ago.

My wife happened to
drive past the old house the
day after Laura died, only
to discover that it had been
bulldozed—the very day
Laura passed away!

It gave ME goosebumps,
I admit.

A 14-year-old North Van-
couver girl was taken to
Lions Gate Hospital with
head injuries after being hit
by a car last Friday.

The teenager was struck
down by a 1984 blue Buick
at 5:30 p.m. while crossing
Grand Boulevard at 15th
Strect.

The driver, a 44-year-old
North Vancouver man, ap-
parently stopped at the stop
sign on Grand Boulevard.
Then, failing to see the girl,
he proceeded north into the

intersection striking the girl.

She was released over the

TAXI

weekend.

The driver has

been

DR. SOPHIE M. CHEEVERS
DENTIST

is pleased to announce
her association with
Dr. R.B. Telford
Dr. C.D. Mielke
Dr. D.D. Waterbury
Dr. R.E. Bourgeault

250-25th St. West Van 922-0144

Bob Hunter _ Girl struck down

¢ strictly personal e

charged with failing to yield
lo a pedestrian.

Insist on Sunshine

987-3333

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