As I have mentioned previously, there are those evenings when I end up being the only living person in the building, usually due to work that I haven’t managed to accomplish during the day. On those occasions I’m in and out of the office up front, digging in the records or the candy bowl that sits on the counter—meaning before I can depart for home I have to lock the door from the office to the foyer and the door from the foyer into the service hall. And lately, whether or not we’ve had a visitation and no matter who actually locked up the building at 5:00 or sometime thereafter, the light has been on in the men’s restroom. I started to say bathroom, but someone told me we don’t bathe in there . . . although there are some folks who have.

I can see the door right before I pass through the last door I have to lock. Since I’m walking across the hall to the restrooms and the lounge that will someday live on the first floor, I will glance in that direction. You know, just to make certain no one is hiding in the dark, waiting to pounce on me as I come around the stairs. And the restroom light is always beckoning to me from beneath the door.

I didn’t think much about it the first time . . . or the second . . . but by the third I was beginning to wonder. I would knock on the door (as though anyone hiding in there is going to tell me it’s occupied), then push it open just enough to reach in and flip the light switch. (That way no one can grab my arm and yank me into the Twilight Zone.) The first time I just turned and walked back toward the foyer, through the door into the service hall, and never looked back . . . just like I did the second time. But the third time . . . the third time I stopped before entering the back hallway. I stopped and I turned and I watched the door, the door to the men’s restroom. I stood and I watched that sliver of a crack, fully expecting it to light up again.

The whole time I was standing there, which seemed like forever but was probably a hair shy of that, I contemplated what I would do if the light actually came back on. And what would that mean? There could be a short in the switch. There could be someone standing on the toilet (so I couldn’t see their feet if I actually looked under the stall door), waiting until everyone left so they could frolic about the building. Or we could be haunted by a ghost that was afraid of the dark and liked to hang out in the men’s room. The only one I was okay with was the short in the switch, and ascertaining that to be the problem was beyond my area of expertise. The other two required making a hasty exit to I-didn’t-know-where ‘cause every door in the building has a cantankerous 37 year old lock that may or may not cooperate at any given time, and if I’m being chased by something, I don’t want that to be a time of cantankerousness. And it needs to be something that’s really slow.

So why is it such an issue if the light is on or even if it refuses to remain extinguished until the next business day? Because I don’t understand it. I can make up all sorts of reasons, but the fact remains that I don’t understand it. It constitutes an unknown—and unknowns are the things many of us fear the most. Enter the analogy with Death.

Although we understand the body’s response to death, we have no one who can actually tell us what happens to that person based on their own experience. No one is alive today that has ever come back from the dead and reported on the trip. So we don’t know if we’re aware of what happens around us. We don’t know if we’re in a holding pattern waiting for some future event or if it’s like falling asleep and not waking up for the next million years. We just don’t know. Religion answers that question based on their particular belief system; atheists provide a completely different response. The fact is what lies immediately beyond death is perhaps the greatest unknown of all. And when faced with that unknown—and the certainty of its coming—many of us deny its existence instead of preparing for its eventual arrival. If we’re not careful, that fear will suck the life right out of living—and what good is being alive if you’re too afraid of death to enjoy the trip?

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