"tasteful decomposition" is my belief. get me naked, put me in a wheelbarrow, do your last goodbyes or whatever and dump me in the ocean. if the dolphins have their way with me after that's their business. i feel like the whole funeral business thing is fucking wasteful and pointlessly expensive, the grieving get taken advantage of. it's nice to go visit a grave and all afterwards, but if i get dumped in the ocean somewhere you can make a fun day of it.

Is there an afterlife? That is a matter of faith.

Another thought outside religion: Based on what we can observe, I've been comforted in loss by the realization we never are truly gone.

Our physical form, continues to change (always has). Death always becomes (or "feeds into") new life. But we are never really "gone".

We can even observe this, the way meat content changes composition, based on an animal's diet (grass finished vs corn fed, omega6 vs omega3 fatty acids).

The circle of life, a continuum of cycles, within cycles. All of us. Everything being connected in that way.

Our life continues to shape / influence others - another way we still exist, our influence shaping new generations, behavior, genes.

And they pass this on, and so on.

Nothing, and no one, is really ever gone in that way. We continually change form.

Might not be what anyone is looking to hear. But it's one way to look at existence.

I expect nothing, and I'm pretty sure that's what I'm going to get. I won't know the difference. I expect I will go from existing to not.

When my grandfather "died" after a heart attack, he ended up seeing a door with light coming from under it, and he saw himself floating above himself. He was resuscitated and went on to live for two more decades.

My personal belief is that we will all stand in Judgement before our Creator and have to give an account for every action (whether right or wrong) that we have committed. We will receive an eternal reward or an eternal punishment; those who did only good in their lives will go to Heaven, and those who have done any wrong will burn in Hell for eternity.

I imagine that it will feel just like the it did the 13.7 billion years before I was born, no feeling at all, just nothing.