The Classroom Window

Few subjects make uncertainty seem so impolite. I tend to avoid discussions of religion. People often arrive with finished arguments; I generally arrive without one. Even those who claim to hate it seem obliged to declare their position. Please don’t mistake my reluctance for an announcement that I dislike organized religion. I have no particular objection to its being organized. Then someone asks whether I’m spiritual, as though refusing one label obliges me to choose another. I have no declaration prepared. Apparently, my way of avoiding the subject is to discuss it at some length.

When I was in grade school, I attended a Catholic school and often helped the nuns at our church’s convent. This makes me sound more devout than I am. I admired their discipline, and I appreciated that they dressed for the part. I agree with some of what I was taught and disagree with most of it.

After my mother died, I began looking beyond the answer I had grown up with.

I was with her when she died. I knew what had happened in the room. For a while afterward, I returned to the last moments, as though I might find some indication of what happened next. I knew what had happened to her body. I did not know what had happened to my mother.

I read books and articles about life after death. I listened to interviews, podcasts and lectures. Some people described what happened after death with considerable precision. Others admitted that they did not know. I continued with both.

Across hundreds of accounts, the same idea kept resurfacing, though the details varied. The idea was that when we die, we return to wherever we came from and review the life we lived. We experience it from the perspective of the people we encountered. We learn what it felt like to be spoken to by us, helped by us, ignored by us. There is no one waiting to announce a verdict. Having heard the other side, we judge ourselves.

The review would take some time. Some of it would come as no surprise. What I cannot know is exactly how those moments felt to someone else. I suspect the surprises would be in the smaller exchanges—the ones I hardly remember at all.

If I am short with a taxi driver because I am tired, I know I am tired. The driver only knows I was short. I may also have helped someone without realizing it. What I remember of a day may have very little to do with what another person took home from it.

I cannot say whether such a review happens. Even a small chance has made brief exchanges harder for me to dismiss. A kindness can matter long after I have forgotten offering it. So can a moment of impatience.

In many of these accounts, if we failed to learn something, we return to earth and meet it again. We may have a different family, more money or less, a life easier in one respect and harder in another. At some point, the same lesson appears.

It sounded like repeating a grade. I would be interested to know which questions I had missed, though I suspect I would dispute the grading. I would also like some assurance that a person can eventually finish school.

I do not know if any of this is true. My mother’s death did not make me less capable of doubting what I read. It made me more willing to keep reading.

I wanted to know where she was. Could she see me? Did she know what had happened since she died? I would think of something to tell her and remember that I could not call. The books offered possibilities. None of them could tell me anything particular about my mother.

My mother’s whereabouts had also been a matter of some urgency in kindergarten.

I had separation anxiety as a child. Preschool had been difficult; kindergarten was worse. My mother would drop me off in the morning, and I would become upset when she left. As far as I knew, she drove away. I had watched her go.

Years later, she told me that after leaving the classroom, she would sit in her car outside the school. She could see me through the window. She worried about me, so she stayed until I settled down.

I had not known she was there.

For years, I remembered those mornings from inside the classroom. My mother remembered them from the car. It was the same morning. She could see me. I could only see her leave. She watched me become upset. She also watched me eventually turn my attention to something else.

Had she come back through the classroom door, I would have wanted to go home with her. She stayed where she was. I stayed where I was. In time, I learned how the day worked.

I do not expect to get used to my mother’s death in the way I got used to school. Some days I can attend to what is in front of me. On others I would like very much to be collected early.

I feel her presence. I am quite certain she is with me, although I cannot explain what that means or how it works. I have been certain before about where she was.

I once watched my mother leave a classroom and believed she had gone. She had gone only as far as the car.