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Would You Want To Meet Your Parents In The Afterlife?

...especially if it was his one, which was basically the world in about 1952 with all the rubbish bits, like rain and racism taken out....

Sounds bleeding brilliant to me, too! Maybe I'll bump into him there one day :)
 
I have a good relationship with my parents. I certainly wouldn't mind meeting them in a hypothetical afterlife, assuming it was in the "good place". Were I in the "bad place", I would be fine with not having a family reunion, as I am not the "misery loves company" type. All the same, I can understand why people who have a toxic relationship with their parents might not be so enthusiastic.
 
As a vegetarian, unintentional soul-flesh interface cannibalism is not a problem I have to consider, so you're on your own with that one.

Same'ere. I don't eat dead meat.
 
She's the only cat I've ever had to go missing.I'd rather have found her dead in a bush, to be honest!

Yup, my parents had a JRT cross bitch called Ginny which they'd acquired from some bad home. Ginny was nervous and snappy, happy, unhousetrained, unfriendly, given to anxiety-chewing and food theft and a generally useless pet.

To their credit the oldies made a lovely pet of her and she became an ideal house dog, fiercely protective of them.

They kept her for 6 years or so, until my brother's kids took her for a walk over some fields and she went missing, never to be seen again. There were many searches but not a trace was found.
My mother was distraught and has never really got over it.
 
Anyway... my paternal grandmother was a committed Spiritualist who told me that when you die, you close your eyes. When you open them you are in a beautiful place full of light where all the people you've loved who've died before you are there to greet you.

My other grandmother told me that when you die you go off to become an angel, which gave me a lifelong horror of the Heavenly Host and especially of cherubs, who are obviously dead babies and toddlers.

Hearing children called 'little angels' or seeing them done up as them horrifies me. It's like tempting Fate.
At school Nativity plays I'd have to fight an impulse to run onstage and rip the 'angels'' tinsel wings and haloes, shouting 'CAN'T YOU PEOPLE SEE HOW DANGEROUS THIS IS?'

So yeah, I'm going with Spiritualist Gran.
 
Communicated from the spirit world by one who went on ahead . . .

Hello Mater, Hello Pater,
Here we are then, Late & Later,
How you find it? Entertaining?
Have you met God, incidentally, he's still reigning?

I was married, to a woman.
She introduced me to her coven.
You remember Mrs Melly?
Well I can't explain those punctures in her belly!

All the angels, have one higher,
They're ambitious, in the choir,
I am barely mezzo-sopranna,
But they're adjusting me tomorra with a spanna!

Now I don't want this to scare ya,
Corona Virus ain't Malaria!
But I got it off a nice lass
And she got it off three others in her vice-class.

Dearest Pater, darling Mater,
I'm a repentant masturbator!
If there's still issues, with those tissues,
Can we bin them and I'll catch up with you later!


Tune is Dance of the Whores, as Beecham used to introduce it. :evillaugh:
So you hope to meet the long-dead Alan Sherman in Camp Afterlife?!
 
the long-dead Alan Sherman

I don't think he's much known these days. Time was when that ditty was broadcast every week on Children's Favourites. Its references to American summer camp routines were probably quite exotic to many Brit Brats listening. It certainly added a weird dimension to La Gioconda, when the time came to hear that! :actw:
 
I don't think he's much known these days. Time was when that ditty was broadcast every week on Children's Favourites. Its references to American summer camp routines were probably quite exotic to many Brit Brats listening. It certainly added a weird dimension to La Gioconda, when the time came to hear that! :actw:

Yup, there was that, and the Laughing Policeman, and the Teddy Bears' Picnic, and...

Here's a list from memory.

1. Puffin' Billy - Melodi Light Orchestra
2. The Runaway Train - Vernon Dalhart
3. The Big Rock Candy Mountain - Burl Ives
4. I Taut I Taw A Puddy Tat - Mel Blanc
5. Buckingham Palace - Anne Stephens
6. Run Rabbit Run - Flanagan & Allen
7. Little White Duck - Danny Kaye
8. The Three Billy Goats Gruff - Frank Luther
9. The Teddy Bears' Picnic - Henry Hall & His Orchestra (Vocal: Val Rosing)
10. Coronation Scot - Sidney Torch & His Light Orchestra
11. The Bee Song - Arthur Askey
12. The Laughing Policeman - Charles Penrose
13. Trains (Parts 1 & 2) - Reginald Gardiner
14. On The Good Ship Lollipop - Shirley Temple
15. I Know An Old Lady - Burl Ives
16. Swinging On A Star - Bing Crosby
17. Me And My Teddy Bear - Rosemary Clooney
18. The Woody Woodpecker Song - Mel Blanc
19. The Typewriter - Leroy Anderson
20. Tubby The Tuba (Parts 1 & 2) - Danny Kaye
21. Grandfather's Clock - The Radio Revellers
22. The Lion And Albert - Stanley Holloway
23. Over The Rainbow - Judy Garland

OK, I actually nicked that from an Amazon CD listing -
Children's Favourites: 23 Original Hit Recordings from the Classic Radio Show

'The Bee Song'? - was a ditty hinting at an actual profanity considered fit for children? How shocking.
 
was a ditty hinting at an actual profanity considered fit for children?

They would probably want rap these days! Does the show or concept survive in any form, in the world of downloads, play-lists and ipods?

I think the show was always built around a playlist, so kids might learn to request from the same eternal - or very slowly-evolving - menu, rather than hankering after the Top Twenty hits of the week. I recall that quite a lot of the time the presenter would say, "We can't seem to find the record you requested, Pubert, so here is Bernard Cribbins instead!"

Not quite payola but a function of the usual radio-play licence, which allowed multiple plays within a time-frame. No doubt the hardy perennials made economic sense, until the play-lists became positively surreal in their remoteness! :oops:
 
Maybe the hope was that children's musical tastes would move straight from Danny Kaye and Mel Blanc to Sing Something Simple via Radio 2, missing out Radios Caroline and Luxembourg and all that beat combo unpleasantness.
 
Here's a list from memory
7. Little White Duck - Danny Kaye

This seems odd. In the U.S. Burl Ives owned Little White Duck. One of my first children's LP's was titled "Burl Ives Sings Little White Duck and Other Children's Favorites.
Puffin' Billy was the theme some of a beloved children's' TV show, "Captain Kangaroo." I didn't learn the title of the piece until the 90's.
 
I couldn't resist and went to
Here's a list from memory
7. Little White Duck - Danny Kaye

This seems odd. In the U.S. Burl Ives owned Little White Duck. One of my first children's LP's was titled "Burl Ives Sings Little White Duck and Other Children's Favorites.
Puffin' Billy was the theme some of a beloved children's' TV show, "Captain Kangaroo." I didn't learn the title of the piece until the 90's.
I couldn't resist and went to youtube. The version I remember is Danny Kaye, although they're remarkably similar. The only other two on the list that I remember are big rock candy mountain (definitely burl ives) and of course over the rainbow. But my mother didn't have much time for kids' songs - she just assumed I was listening to Ella Fitzgerald and whatever else with the rest of the family.
 
Time for some Khalil Gibran.

On Children

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.
 
Back to the original subject, I'm fortunate that my parents are still alive in their 80s.
I do hope my familiar ancestors haven't been watching too closely over me, though. :omg:
 
Yes, I'm hoping to meet my parents in the afterlife, but I'm not expecting them necessaritly to be a couple!
Their marriage was a struggle on earth.
My mother had a previous love _someone who got killed in the war, and I hope for her sake she has been able to renew that relationship.

What if some of us are reincarnated?
We may have more than one set of 'significant others' to reunite with.
Surely, there's no rule that we can't!
Each one-to -one relationship is unique, stands by itself.
Does the desire to meet have to be mutual? What if one soul never wants to see the other soul ever again?

So many questions -no answers ,until we ourselves die and find out for ourselves! (There have got to be some mysteries left to us OAP's!)
 
Yes, I'm hoping to meet my parents in the afterlife, but I'm not expecting them necessaritly to be a couple!
Their marriage was a struggle on earth.
My mother had a previous love _someone who got killed in the war, and I hope for her sake she has been able to renew that relationship.

What if some of us are reincarnated?
We may have more than one set of 'significant others' to reunite with.
Surely, there's no rule that we can't!
Each one-to -one relationship is unique, stands by itself.
Does the desire to meet have to be mutual? What if one soul never wants to see the other soul ever again?

So many questions -no answers ,until we ourselves die and find out for ourselves! (There have got to be some mysteries left to us OAP's!)

My father collected books about Edgar Cayce and of course I read them all. Cayce was a fascinating character and well worth reading about.

Cayce's teachings about reincarnation described sets of people who returned together in groups, with different relationships to each other. Souls would gravitate towards the others in the group and their stories would play out together.
You might really like your boss because he'd been your big brother in your last life, or really dislike a neighbour because she'd run off with your husband 200 years ago.

Some of the reincarnated groups had been through terrible traumas together, such as massacres and shipwrecks.

So your soulmate in this life was likely one of half a dozen or more souls whom you'll have known for aeons; sometimes as friends, sometimes as lovers, sometimes as your siblings or children. You have to work out your problems with these souls and help each other learn from mistakes.
After you die you'll wait for the rest of the group, including Wife/Hubby, to turn up for a debrief and to sort out the next adventure.

Techy says he and I last met on the banks of the Nile. :loveu:
 
Yes, different writers have different theories and ideas, but we won't really find out until we die.

Even then, I suspect that what we perceive as reality may depend on what we expect. (e.g the dwarfs in C.S Lewis 'children's book 'The Last Battle'. They still think they are in dirty old stable when they are in heaven . Perhaps this explains the existance of ghosts.)

I certainly don't want to be stuck with my current personality forever. Hopefully we eventually dissolve into a (possibly recyclable) neutral pool of energy.
 
Yes, different writers have different theories and ideas, but we won't really find out until we die.

Even then, I suspect that what we perceive as reality may depend on what we expect. (e.g the dwarfs in C.S Lewis 'children's book 'The Last Battle'. They still think they are in dirty old stable when they are in heaven . Perhaps this explains the existance of ghosts.)

I certainly don't want to be stuck with my current personality forever. Hopefully we eventually dissolve into a (possibly recyclable) neutral pool of energy.
Yup, we have no idea.

I was raised with several different theories about it all. Hell was never mentioned once.
 
I suppose the simplest thing to do is just ignore it and enjoy life while you have it. That's the simplest thing to do - but not the easiest, alas! You can't help having your thoughts drift towards death sometimes, unless you're truly blasé, so the best thing to do is not allow them to rule your actions.
 
I suppose the simplest thing to do is just ignore it and enjoy life while you have it. That's the simplest thing to do - but not the easiest, alas! You can't help having your thoughts drift towards death sometimes, unless you're truly blasé, so the best thing to do is not allow them to rule your actions.

It's akin to being on vacation and having to force yourself to avoid thinking of work (etc.) matters that await your return.
 
I don't think I worry about it.
I was brought up in a 100% Christian home, but my views have changed over the years.
I grew up expecting to meet Jesus / be in the presence of God and have all my questions answered .
Sadly I suspect things aren't going to be quite that wonderful or simple. I may not be up to understanding all the answers even after death -"42"!

Never mind!
 
After my mother died some years after my father, I found a few personal papers and gathered that she had been engaged 4 times before marrying my father. (slightly pissed me off when I remember all the criticism I got after one or two of my failed relationships!) I suspect that apart from the one who died in the war she dumped the others. Wonder if they were all waiting in line for her where ever? I would have liked to have heard those conversations.
 
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