Resting in Peace is Overrated

I just stumbled upon this descanso yesterday, while making my weekly karmic rounds (on both sides of the Tao!) in Ventura County. It was situated aside Harbor Boulevard, the main artery route westward from the 101 to Port Hueneme and the Channel Islands Harbor.

As you can see, it honors one Peter Bashkiroff, an elderly man who met the end of his time on Terra Firma in January of 2024. What’s interesting is the decedent was seemingly Russian, and I can safely say I’ve never seen a Russian honored by a descanso here in California. It was a formidable construction, with a standard angel statuette at its base.

What I wanted to note this week in this column, pertinent to Peter’s epitaph above with its common slogan ‘God Rest His Soul,’ was the prolific frequency in which gravestones and descanso markers offer the age-old standard of “resting in peace.”

“Rest in peace” or “R.I.P.” are by far the most common inscriptions on grave markers across the Christian western world. It’s a brief one-liner prayer for the decedent to find peace in the afterlife. I always found that platitude a bit dreary, to be honest. For one thing, it implies that the body and soul are ‘at peace,’ as in, no longer subject to the trials and tribulations of life. Whenever I hear some priest or minister speak of resting in peace, I can only envision one of two scenarios for that decedent…either that chestnut of being an angelic being of energy involuntarily conscripted to a collective harmony of possible eternal boredom (ha) or the far more dreary prospect of simply being worm food and done is done (good news, that ain’t the case).

Me, I don’t think the dead rest in peace at all. And I doubt that next phase is comprised of more of the same crapola we all wrestle with for the better part of seven decades, give or take. No, I think the dead almost certainly have higher things to learn, and plenty of things to reconcile and process after having muckity-mucked the corporeal bit. Few folks head on into the ethereal with zero unresolved issues, methinks. From most firsthand reports from folks who’ve had vivid near death or out of body experiences, it sounds like whatever we morph into, or revert back to, that essence of soul, energy, sapience, sentience, consciousness, whatever the heck you wanna call it, is a lot better equipped to comprehend complexities of existence than while hosted (trapped?) in these meat-water-stardust puppet bodies of ours. Why that is, I do not know yet. But we all find out, don’t we.

Given the balances of the meta-constructs in this universe alone, and let’s face it, we’re barely able to perceive any of it quite yet, we’re at the bottom of the sapient ladder as a species (but at least, we ARE on that ladder), all the evidence to date suggests life designs itself to improve, to evolve, to change, to adapt, to BECOME MORE. Scientifically and spiritually, that conditional process seems primed across a variety of spectra both biologic and intellectual/emotional. And it is conditioned indeed, its limits and parameters dictated by the collective macro-organism of interconnected humanity, its advancement upward in no way guaranteed to happen in a timely fashion and not necessarily without cost to life, limb, or sanity.

It might feel somewhat strange for a newly ascended soul to ‘rest,’ to chill out and put the feet up on the golden desk and take a breather for a few millennia (amateur tip: there ain’t no linear time after we shed the coil, from gathered evidence to date). One would think a departed soul, free at last from its earthly shackles of primal fears and competitive monkey-brained natures, would do the exact opposite of resting. Shedding our core essence of all those pain-in-the-ass physical ailments, a hopeful reconstitution of lost memories and a reintegration for those unlucky bastards who went out Alzheimer’s style, or worse, becoming whole for the first time in our sordid existence…‘rest’ would likely be the last thing on our minds.

Best case scenario? Access to all those unexplained mysteries here on earth, be it the truth or falsehood of the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot to where your cat Whiskers disappeared to when you were in sixth grade. Catching up with loved ones who’d shed the mortal coil before you…especially them doggos, am I right, loyal acolytes of The Dogs of Generation X? Also, the power of flight. Let’s not forget that long awaited ability most wanted by us poor perpetually grounded hairless apes. I dunno if becoming an entity of energy truly involves actual aero-based flight or if that transmit mode is propelled by energy-based physics like electromagnetism or space-time warps or whatever, but however we move about the ether-worlds, it’s probably a lot faster and more convenient than hopping a Greyhound bus. That could be a conceit, of course. What little I know about the next world is precious little.

Anyway. No, I tend not to bid departed souls to rest in peace. I usually offer words of encouragement or support to them, often something like “Hope you’re faring well on that road ahead,” or “Sorry about the way you met your end here, but I’m sure you’re prospering elsewhere.” It feels more apropos to use inclusive language that isn’t so fatalistic and final. Because as you roadies have surely sussed out by now, I don’t tend to draw as much distinction between life and death as many of my western contemporaries are wont to do. They’re somewhere else now, somewhere I cannot access, existing at a vibrational frequency I am unable to perceive at this point in my evolution. Most pertinent in these types of assertions, obviously, is my near absolute certainty that they still exist, somewhere, somehow, and that they haven’t been forgotten, whether I knew their earthly name or not.

Since viewing the descanso above these last twenty-some hours, I’ve been thinking about that estranged friend I lost last year, after his untimely demise in August of 2024. I talk about him a fair amount in this post. I said it then in a different fashion, but I’ll say it again now, concerning ‘resting in peace.’ If anyone deserved peace, it was that guy, believe me. He hadn’t been at peace since he was seven years old, for reasons I won’t go into here. But once again, I’ll marvel at the probability that best to my limited knowledge, his ‘essence’ now knows more about existential jimmy-jam than I ever have.

And that makes me happy for him, and for my unmet Russian brother Peter Bashkiroff as well. Always remember, dear roadies. Everyone you’ve ever met, and everyone you’ve never met, they’re all your sisters and brothers. You just can’t feel ‘em all yet.

But you will. In time.