Where Do We Go from Here?, by Gillian

Waking up in my bed that cold, wet, typically English, morning, my first day as a student at the University of Sheffield, did I wonder where will this lead? what will happen? where do I go from her? If I did, I don't remember. I certainly don't remember how I answered myself.

Surely I must have asked myself some questions along those lines on another cold wet morning, lying in my bed on my first day as a college graduate. I was unemployed and apparently likely to remain so. Jobs were thin on the ground and many of my friends were leaving for miscellaneous spots around the world which all had one thing in common; on our schoolroom wall maps of the world, they had all been colored bright red. Why wasn't I a part of this mass exodus to take up opportunities offered by our erstwhile Empire? Inertia, I guess. Idleness. A certain unwillingness to make decisions. Rather, I would drift, worry-free, wherever the currents took me.

A few months later these currents deposited me on the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth, heading across the Atlantic. Waking that first morning in my rolling, heaving, bunk, did I lie there contemplating my future? Where do I go from here? I think not. I staggered to the breakfast room to chase an erratically sliding plate around a pitching table, giving my future arrival in New York, with no job and nowhere to stay, little space in my head.

Every twist and turn in my life feels to me to have followed a similar pattern. The ebb and flow of life somehow deposited me into my bed on my first morning as a married woman, and some years later in another bed, my first morning waking up as a divorcee. Then waking up as an out lesbian, followed by my first morning to wake up beside Betsy. Suddenly, or so it seemed, I found myself waking up on my first morning as a retiree, and still not really knowing how I got there. Life's waves had simply deposited me on yet another shore. I had never, as far as I can remember, asked myself the question, where do I go from here?

Waking up in a hospital bed, however, which I have done a couple of times in recent years, tends to concentrate the mind! Where do I go from here? becomes a vital question. Can I go home? When? How? Will I be in a wheelchair? Will I ever be completely better? Or the very worst, will I die here? And that brings up the really BIG where do we go from here?

Now, as old age creeps quietly upon me, I occasionally do find myself asking the BIG where do we go from here? in my own bed on a drowsy morning. It no longer takes waking in a hospital bed to nudge such thoughts awake. I wouldn't say it worries me, simply that I chose to contemplate it once in a while.

I cannot say I believe .... anything. On the other hand there is little that I positively absolutely refuse to acknowledge is possible. The exception to that would be a Biblical Heaven with angels and harps, and a fire and brimstone Hell. Other than that, I just don't know. It seems to me that when my body dies, some energy must be released. The world needs balance, so that energy must be used elsewhere. But how that works, what form it takes, is beyond my imagining.

As far as it goes, it fits nicely with various theories of reincarnation, about which I keep a basically open mind. But I have a hard time getting my head around it. I find it almost impossible to imagine a scenario where some future, reincarnate me, is aware of past multiple me's, simply because energy from the present me is put to use elsewhere. Especially as, if I get into this transfer of energy thing, I come to the belief that all energy is the same so mine is not confined to human form. If mine returns as a nice shiny apple growing on a tree in New Zealand, I fear it will not be visited by any ghosts of Xmas past.

Just as I seem never to have given much thought to my destination at different junctions in my life, I expect that without too much anxiety I can let the tides of death deposit me wherever they will, and wherever that is, I shall never know.

But maybe I've got it all wrong. Some morning perhaps I shall wake up dead, and at that moment know all the answers to all that ultimate question, where do we go from here? I just hope there will be strong rip tides and currents and monster waves to wash me along to wherever I have to go. I don't want to have to start out my next life making decisions.

© 4 Jan 2016 

About the Author 

 I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30-years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty-years. We have been married since 2013.