What Happens to Us When We Die? (And Why I Refuse to Believe It’s Nothing)

There Has To Be Something

I don’t care what the scientists or priests or smug Reddit atheists say. I refuse to believe that after everything we live through , the heartbreaks, the awkward sex, the cheese toasties at 2 a.m. , we just blink out like a dodgy streetlamp. What happens to us when we die? I’ve asked that question since before I knew what death really was. Before I lost anyone, and before I realised that one day, it would be me. You. All of us. I made peace with that a long time ago, but the question remains and I want to explore it further.

Why We Can’t Accept Oblivion

We’re not wired for nothingness, but we are wired for comfort. For continuity… for someone to pat our heads and say, “Don’t worry, you’ll see Nana again.” And maybe you will. Maybe you won’t. But how the hell are we supposed to just accept that we vanish? Like… we just simply blink out?

Remember being a kid? When your parents felt like gods and school was an emotional warzone? When your worst trauma was dropping your ice cream or losing your Tamagotchi?

Then we grew up and fell in love with John or Sarah or that one who looked like Brad Pitt with a nicotine addiction. We poured ourselves into people, broke apart when they left, glued ourselves back together with duct tape and regret. Then we did it again.

The Life That Prepares Us for Death

We lived, and we did dumb things and clever things and very mediocre things. Danced at weddings, cried in toilets, screamed at phones, bit our tongues at family dinners. We watched stars rise and fall, chased diets, chased dreams, chased other people’s expectations.

And we thought marriage would be the final destination. Then came kids, tiny versions of ourselves who handed us back all the chaos we tried to suppress. They taught us that we never knew anything to begin with. They showed us what it means to fear death, not for ourselves, but for them.

The Moments That Break Us

And then, inevitably, life took a swing. An illness. Even a crash. Perhaps a diagnosis. Something that made the ground shake in that horrible, quiet way. You screamed at the sky and there was no answer. No warning and no fairness.

Some of us have buried people we weren’t ready to lose. Some of us have buried children. And that’s the kind of pain that makes atheism feel like a cruel joke.

You want to believe there’s something more. Not because you’re scared, but because love shouldn’t die just because the body did.

The Murky Grief That Never Ends

You carry it. That loss. That question. You smile at parties, but part of you is stuck in that hospital room, or next to that grave, or at the phone call that changed everything.

You’re supposed to move on, but no one tells you where you’re supposed to go. Time heals nothing, it just teaches you to pretend better.
(I wrote more about how grief shapeshifts in this blog on ghosting yourself, which might resonate if you’ve lost more than just a person.)

So What Happens to Us When We Die?

Let’s entertain a few possibilities, shall we? Not with certainty, but with curiosity.

Buddhism teaches that death is merely a transition. Your consciousness sheds one form and moves on, like changing outfits between lifetimes. Rebirth. Karma. A cosmic recycling program with better lighting and fewer receipts.

Christianity? Heaven or hell, depending on whether you ticked the right boxes. Or, in some sects, a long nap until Judgment Day where you wake up to find out if you’re on the guest list or headed downstairs.

Hindus believe in reincarnation too, but layered with dharma, karma, and a whole spiritual bureaucracy that makes your soul’s next destination a direct result of your actions.

Then you’ve got near-death experiences. The people who flatlined and came back with stories of tunnels, lights, dead relatives waving from the sidelines. Are they hallucinations? Brain chemistry gasping for air? Or a glimpse of the real thing? I explored this in The Life of Q because it is a question that has fascinated me for decades.

And what about science? Consciousness, as far as we know, is a byproduct of a functioning brain. When the brain goes quiet, the lights go out. That’s the textbook explanation. But we don’t even understand how consciousness works yet. So maybe science doesn’t have the full picture either.

What I Believe (Even If I’m Wrong)

We are not just meat and memories. We are electricity. Magnetism. We’re instincts, déjà vu, and the feeling you get when someone stares at you across a room before you even see them.

We are more than neurons firing. We’re also the way your chest tightens when you hear a song that shouldn’t matter but does. We are the smell of someone long gone, still lingering in a hoodie you haven’t worn in years. And we are grief and love and the phantom ache of things that never had a body.

And that kind of energy, the kind that makes you fall in love, or feel someone’s death before the phone rings, doesn’t just evaporate. Maybe it changes shape or it folds into time. Maybe it moves sideways instead of forward.

But it doesn’t vanish. You don’t vanish.

When you’ve lived as deeply and felt as fiercely as a human can, you can’t convince me it all just stops. That it flickers out without a trace. That consciousness, curiosity, and connection are just side effects of a squishy brain and not evidence of something more.

Call it spirit. Awareness. Call it nonsense if you want.

But I believe something continues. Because we were never built to be nothing.

What Happens When We Die: Searching for Meaning in the Aftermath

We try to find comfort in signs, like a song playing at the right moment. Even when a dream felt too vivid. The feather on the pavement. Maybe they’re with us. Maybe they’re gone. But you feel them. And you’d rather believe in that feeling than settle for clinical nothingness.

So no, I won’t accept that we just end.

Maybe there’s a door we walk through, or there’s a rerun of everything we ever loved. Maybe it’s just peace, finally. Or maybe we come back. As a bird. A breeze. Or another kid asking the same damn questions.

Whatever it is, I believe it matters. Because if death is the full stop, then life was just a long sentence with no point.

And I don’t believe that. Not for one second.

Fox

P.S. If this struck a chord, you might want to read Circle in the Sand. It’s not about answers. It’s about asking the right questions.