Where do we go

.......when we die? Does it really just end? I can't fathom ceasing to exist. Ceasing to be. I can't imagine not knowing the things I know, loving the people I love, living the life I live. Do we really just stop being? In Buddhism, after you die you go into the Bardo world, full of demons and tricks trying to keep you from moving on to your next life. But it isn't really you. It's your soul. But it isn't you. In fact, it doesn't remember ever being you. And in the next life, it just starts over. No questions. No weird feeling that it was once you. Of course, as a Christian, I should believe that there is a heaven. A lovely place in the sky, where all the people that died before you are waiting to celebrate with you. Heck, maybe even people you didn't know. Like da Vinci. Maybe you get to meet them and chat with them. But only if you were good. That is the catch, gotta be good. Somehow, I would like to think there is something after you die. Where does the energy that makes up you go? It must go somewhere. Energy does not just disappear. It constantly transforms. And it is one thing to believe that the energy that makes up your physical body then turns into food for the worms that will eat it while you sit in the ground decomposing, but what happens to the energy of your mind? Of your soul? It can't just disappear. It is scientifically impossible. Everyone knows the mind emits great amounts of energy, thats how the power of attraction works. They've done studies showing that your thoughts emit energy. And I'm inclined to believe that thoughts are outside the realm of your physical body. So where does it go? Where do we go? 

If you can't tell, my grandmother is dying. slowly. Tomorrow she will come to our house to basically starve to death, with pain medication so she can't feel it. Hospice is coming in to monitor things, and we have the special bed and oxygen and all of that. That way she won't be in an awful hospital, but will be in what has become her room in our house, windows open and breeze coming in, and all of us here, and we seem to think this will make it better. I don't think it will. She knows what is happening. She can't speak, and rarely responds to us, but I know she knows. And I can't imagine how scared she must be. Because how do you know that you are going to die, and soon, and not freak out? How do you resign yourself to no longer being? I don't know. I guess our purpose is just to remind her how much we love her before she goes. And hope she goes peacefully. But again, how do you just slip peacefully into something you don't know or understand? People I've known, and loved, have died. But not right in front of me. I don't know how to sit by and watch. And what bothers me most, is that I keep having these horrible flashes that someday that will be me. Obviously everyone dies, but I keep having nightmares (when I can fall asleep that is) that its going to happen to me when I'm still young. When I have these dreams, I'm not an 80-year-old woman who has lived a really great life and had love and babies and grandbabies and all that. I'm young. So not only am I scared for my grandmother going into the unknown, but for me. I know this is awful and depressing, but I need to get some of it out. So I apologize. I'm so scared.