When I worked as a hospice chaplain, I would sometimes be asked what happens to us when we die. I would answer honestly: I don’t know. I haven’t died yet. 

My response often surprised people. Maybe there is an assumption that a chaplain should possess certain knowledge about the afterlife, but the truth is, I don’t. I am still very much alive. I know what I believe, and I never imposed those beliefs on those I served, yet belief and knowledge are not the same thing. 

What I do know is this: I have sat with people as they passed from this life. I have watched someone breathe their last breath, and what I witnessed was peaceful. No anxiety, no struggle, just a quiet tear rolling down a cheek as life gently slipped away. 

I have sat with atheists and evangelical Christians, with the devout and the uncertain, and one thing became clear to me: not all of their beliefs about death and dying could be simultaneously true. The atheist who believed their body would return to the soil as plant matter and the Christian who believed loved ones were waiting in glory cannot both be correct at the same time, in a literal sense. One believed nothing was waiting; the other believed everything was. It was never my role to determine who was right. 

When someone needed certainty, I did not challenge it. If their beliefs brought them peace, they were held with respect. The only time I intervened was when these were wrapped in guilt, shame, or fear. If a person lay dying, afraid of judgment or eternal punishment, then my task was to help them move toward peace. Sometimes that meant calling clergy for familiar rites. Sometimes it meant simply affirming that they were loved unconditionally. Whatever they needed, everyone deserved peace. 

From the moment we are born, we are moving toward death. Death is a normal part of the human condition. What remains open is the interpretation of what, if anything, lies beyond, and this is where imagination becomes a gift. 

I would often ask, “What do you imagine the end of life to be like?” People frequently reached back to childhood memories - a garden, climbing trees, mother baking bread, a holiday. One person spoke of riding motorbikes. We would go from there. If they resonated with the idea of reunion, we imagined loved ones waiting. If they had no religious framework, we imagined transformation, perhaps becoming a tree, or a flower, or part of something else in nature - beautiful and alive. 

We are creatures of imagination. We write novels, compose symphonies, paint landscapes, and create films, all from the depths of our inner worlds. Why would we think that this extraordinary human gift has no place in the final chapter of our lives? 

I often speak of death the same way I speak of sleep. It is The Great Rest. Each night we close our eyes without certainty of what dreams will come, and yet we surrender to them. Why not approach death with a similar hope? 

• Why not imagine infinite worlds? 

• Why not imagine a reunion, if this brings comfort? 

• Why not imagine being immersed in Unconditional Love? 

• Why not imagine redemption from pain, healing from sorrow, joy where joy was absent in this life? 

There is no harm in imagining the most loving possibility available to us. 

Some baulk at approaching death on such open-ended terms. They demand certainty, and in a way that affirms their religious beliefs. I understand why they need this, yet from my experience, what causes most harm to people is imposing fear. To tell a dying person that their life counts for nothing unless they have affirmed specific doctrines, and to burden them with guilt, shame, and anxiety in their final moments for not doing so, is, in my opinion, a profoundly cruel thing to do. 

Normalise death and treat it as a sacred act. Every person will pass from this life and deserves to do so in peace. That is all. 

If you are interested in opening up space in your life to explore these ideas further, my book Death and Dying for the Non-Religious was written to help.