Shortly after Jason died, Lewis and I were having pizza and beer and I was crying.  We were joking about the afterlife and my annoyance at people who weren’t respecting my stated beliefs, or Jason’s stated beliefs.  In the middle of that, we had the image of Jason in a toga sitting on a fluffy cloud with a harp looking really confused.  Not just because he didn’t know how to play the harp.

Then we decided that the image of Jason-on-a-cloud was only complete if he had his cell phone in the other hand.  And things deteriorated to wondering how the service is if you are in literally in the cloud.  (This is humorously relevant right at the moment, because I’m on an airplane and writing from in the clouds.  Turns out the service is pretty good if you are willing to pay for it.  (Work is paying, I just got done early.))

In a surprise to no one, I’ve been having lots of thoughts about the afterlife and what I believe.  Or what I want to believe.  And what belief is and how that differs from wanting to believe.  It all gets very meta very quickly.

My current favorite is the idea of Jason in an incorporeal form testing the limits of this new way of being.  I can see him poking at things, just to find out what he can do.  Would his ability with technology transfer?  Is he the reason my phone has only broken once since I got the new one?  I can see him deciding to stick incorporeal hands into my phone and zoom into its workings and adjust some things to make it run better, just because he can and wants to help.  I could see him trying to move something in a room, failing to pick it up and then figuring out that, he can’t move it directly, but he can influence the cat to go knock over a book that will fall in such a way as to hit that pencil which will roll down and fall on the floor and the wind from me bending over to pick up the pencil will dislodge the paper that I was about to forget to bring with me.

Basically, I’m saying that my favorite image of Jason in the afterlife is one in which he is creating Rube Goldberg machines in order to make things run more smoothly for the people he loves.  I’m not sure whether or not I believe it, but I like it.