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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mark silvers who wrote (28335)	1/17/1999 12:09:00 PM
From: nihil	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Mark, I was touched by the story of the death of your father. When I was working in the Worker Comp committee of a large midwestern university, we had a case where a janitor came in at 6 am, put out a fire in a mop bucket at 10am, collapsed and died at 10:30 pm of a massive coronary. The defense cardiologist testified that the death was not related to work because the enzyme counts indicated substantial muscle destruction that had been proceeding for hours. In other words, the only incident that was work related (the fire) was after in expert opinion the critical levels were surpassed. I have heard other cardiologists discussing sudden cardiac arrest as if outcomes were determined long before the time the attack was first noticed. That a loving 10 year old boy might have detected the condition in his father is not beyond the bounds of my belief. Everyone knows stories of children and animals (especially dogs such as Greyfriars Bobby) detecting changes that other cannot sense. I would not have paid much attention to these stories, had I not spent the last night of my beloved father's life nursing him. There were no special duty nurses available, no monitors or such (it was 1958). A lifelong sufferer of gastric ulcer, he had experienced a gastrectomy -- removal of most of the stomach -- and an abscess had formed on his liver. I was told by my uncle his brother, a surgeon, who had consulted with the surgeon that this was perhaps the result sloppy technique or accident in the OR. He became very sick, his kidneys began to fail, he was heavily drugged and could barely sign when he wanted a drink. About 2am called me over, beckoning like Captain Ahab. I put my face down close to his mouth -- and he said with surprising clarity "Do you believe that there is something after death?" we had discussed the issue many times over the years. Though not a scientist, he was the most knowledgeable man I have ever known -- an English professor, naturalist, orator, and writer. I thought awhile, I knew he was not seeking false hope -- and I said "No." After a sip of icewater, he replied "nor I." He closed his eyes and fell asleep. I wiped his face with a moist cloth, and kissed his lips and went back to my chair, read some economic theory, and in two hours, my elder brother came in to change the guard and I drove his car home a few blocks away. About 6 am, I was awakened in my bed by what seemed a blow to my chest, I sat up with the horrible fear that Father was dead. Outside, in the hall, my mother let out a shriek. She said she saw a wraith (her word: she was a great crossworder). In a few more seconds, the phone rang and my brother told me that father had just died (later autopsied as a coronary infarct). A very skeptical family, we later reconstructed the events and agreed on their order. There was no possibility that the events at the apartment had preceded the attack in the hospital. We were all tired, feared and expected his death. He was failing. A telephone ring could hardly help but trigger events we had prepared ourselves to hear. My event was clear enough. I was very fatigued. I could easily have heard the phone and been waked up by it, and then deja entendre. In the dim light of the hall, one could readily imagine anything, but the image of a loved one threatened by death seems much the most likely to arise spontaneously. We never accepted the most obvious explanation -- that we had been visited by my Father's ghost. Nevertheless, the last two scenes of Act. I, Hamlet holds a special feeling for me today. And the fact that all we skeptics had promised to communicate with our relict friends when we had shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause.

To: mark silvers who wrote (28335)	1/17/1999 1:30:00 PM
From: Father Terrence	Respond to of 108807

Mark: Science has not abjectly failed in proving or disproving the so-called paranormal. It has never attempted a real, sustained long-term investigation of the subject. It basically has ignored it altogether. I am still convinced that what Science today dismisses as purely occult nonsense actually has real knowledge at its core and may dramatically change the way we view physics and perhaps some other sciences as well. am aware that science has been an abject failure in proving any sort of supernatural sense. FT