A few years ago, approaching Christmas, I received a phone call from a gentleman named Mark Feary. He was the curator of the Silvershot Gallery in Flinders Lane at the back of St Paul’s Cathedral in central Melbourne.

He said that over the previous three months he had curated an exhibition centring around the themes of “Life”, “Death” and “ The Thereafter”. In September it was “Life”, in October it was “Death”, and “The Thereafter” in November.

The exhibition had closed in early December, and Mark’s intention now was to compose a retrospective catalogue. He had invited a doctor to write a thousand words on “Life”, an undertakes to write a thousand words on “Death”, and now he was looking for a priest or a minister to write something on “The Thereafter”.

Somewhat reluctantly I agreed. Probably what I wrote then is more appropriate to the Easter than to the Christmas season. So, as we approach Easter 2025 may I resurrect (!) an edited version for the readers of Pearls and Irritations.

I have entitled it “The Thereafter”.

Have you ever waited prone and nervous on a trolley outside the operating theatre for a serious, or even mildly serious, operation? Apart from an exiguous theatre smock, you are stripped, shaved even, virtually naked. You have heard stories of clinical misadventure where, during fairly minor operations, patients have expired on the operating table. Even the hearty assurances of the surgeon, the anaesthetist and the nurses do not altogether dispel or alleviate your doubts and anxieties. If one word describes your situation, it is “vulnerable”.

As you lie on the trolley, you look upwards. There are lights, strong lights. You may even wonder if this may not be your last visual experience in this life. You may have heard, too, that for those who have undergone near-death experiences, one of their strongest recollections is of rushing down a long, dark tunnel towards a radiant light. Gloomily, you wonder whether this may not be your next visual experience. Will this be your own personal and premature “Thereafter”?

For Catholics particularly, and for Christians generally, the Preface of the Requiem Mass for the Dead may have something to say by way of reassurance if we are prone to such gloomy speculations on the trolley. It is the message of Easter, the season we are entering upon at the end of this week. It reminds us not just of the current “Thereafter” we may be contemplating as we anticipate this surgeon, this anaesthetist and this operating table, but also the definitive “Thereafter” that sooner or later all of us are destined to confront at the end of our lives.

In Jesus who rose from the dead our hope of resurrection dawned.

The sadness of death gives way to the bright promise of immortality.

For your faithful people life is changed not ended.

When the body of our earthly dwelling lies in death,

We gain an everlasting dwelling place in heaven.

”Changed” it says, “not ended”. So, eternal life for this life, immortality for mortality, a resurrected glorious body for this frail carcase, spirit for matter, everlasting happiness for the trials and tribulations of this world – very reassuring, but a large agenda, to say the least. Can we be confident that it is to this “Thereafter” that we are being beckoned?

Others, however, reject this construction. It is not resurrection but reincarnation that beckons us in the “Thereafter”. If so, will I come back as a better, a more successful, person? Or as a cat, or even a tiger, perhaps? The endless cycle of death and rebirth – the phoenix rising from the ashes? Is this the “Thereafter”?

And finally, of course, there are those who say not resurrection or reincarnation, but THE END. Not “changed” but “ended”? Is the light toward which I seem to rush at the end of the tunnel as the drugs and sedatives take effect, is this merely an illusion, merely the after-image of the lights that shone down on me from above the trolley? If the operation goes wrong, will there be only blackness? Not even blackness – nothing at all, the end of consciousness, the end of life?

So, “changed” or “ended” – there’s the rub. Will there be nothing more substantial than a memory, perhaps immortalised (!) in poetry or an obituary or a headstone in a cemetery? Or will there be a change, a genuine change, like entering this life – passing from one state of consciousness to another different state of consciousness? Or will it be passing from consciousness altogether — the end — oblivion?

So, Shakespeare/s Hamlet wrestled with the “Thereafter”:

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil

Must give us pause. There’s the respect

That makes calamity of so long life…

But that the dread of something after death

The undiscovered country from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of

So, too, did a later generation of soldiers in the trenches in the Somme in the First World War who lived daily with death and the “Thereafter” as their constant companion. A whole clutch of young war poets emerged, both secular and Christian, many of whom perished subsequently in the conflict, but not before they had mused on the significance of death and the nature of the “Thereafter”. Was the rhetoric of the generals and the politicians, the inscribed monuments reared in towns and villages in their memory — were all these their only “Thereafter” — or were they merely the sloughed-off husks from which new life had already emerged?

So, finally, is there hope? Has Jesus rising on the first Easter Sunday set a precedent for all of us? Are human beings so radically different that it justifies a hope in the “Thereafter”? Not like the plants, not even like the animals. That spark, that spirit, consciousness, the reflective mind, understanding, love – shall all these pass into oblivion? Or shall there be a new and everlasting “Thereafter”?

In Jesus who rose from the dead our hope of resurrection dawned.

The sadness of death gives way to the bright promise of immortality.

For your faithful people life is changed not ended.

When the body of our earthly dwelling lies in death

We gain an everlasting dwelling place in heaven.