We had just moved inside our beautiful Tibetan Buddhist Temple, created from Master Worldbuilder Alan Chao’s memories.

I was introducing myself when a pink female avatar with a lot of pink hair cut in and said she’d been looking at this event on the schedule for months but she was afraid to come because it said, Death. Couldn’t you have called it something else?

Well I love it that you actually came to say that, thank you so much, I said. That’s really brave, telling us that you’d been afraid and now here you are. That doesn’t happen every day.

She was primed and didn’t need any more prompts from me or from Ryan, my CHF, (Co-Host Forever).

I have PTSD, she said. So just the word Death triggers me, you know. I know that can happen, I said. Yeah well it sure does for me, but this place is nice and the way you were just talking wasn’t all about, like, just, you know, death, phew, there I said it, but more about ideas like accepting it and helping each other. That’s good to hear. So I’m glad I came.

I remember one Saturday evening at the Zen Hospice Guest House when a young man sat out in his car for over an hour working up the courage to come inside and say goodbye to his grandmother.

Eventually he steeled himself to do it. Knocked on the door (he didn’t need to), I let him in. He walked purposefully right upstairs, didn’t pause, didn’t interact with anyone, sat in the chair at her bedside looking down. When he finally looked up at his grandmother, he slowly started crying, and then sobbing.

Pink avatar told us she’d been a caregiver and it traumatized her. There’s no way you could understand it, she said, unless you’ve experienced it. So that’s me, but how come other people come here to this event? Are they scared, or what are they?

As a Host, you don’t get a better cue than that.

I called on someone who hadn’t been to a Death Q&A before. He said, well I do have a lot going on about death, I guess, because I’m a Type 1 Diabetic and I’ve probably had medics at my house, like, bringing me back, I don’t know, thirty times since Covid.

He went on: I’m kinda used to it by now, you know. I’m in my thirties. I don’t know what’s going to happen or when. But what I really don’t like is the idea of my nieces or someone, because I’m all by myself but they’re really close by. And if they knocked on my door and I didn’t answer and they came in and saw me, I wouldn’t like that.

A lot there, I said. Let me ask you something. When all that happens and the medics have to come and you’re experiencing I-don’t-know-what, do you have a name for that? What do you call it?

Slipping away, he said. That is what I say and how I think about it, what it feels like. And you know what? Maybe you shouldn’t say this but I don’t mind it. It’s very calm. When I come back it’s like, there’s so much more going on. It’s not so comfortable.

Ryan is super tuned to Impermanence and he said slipping away is how it really is, all the time. He said, we just make up that there’s nothing here now to worry about — then Impermanence, which we also call Death, strikes from out of nowhere it seems, because we weren’t looking. We lose someone we love. We’re devastated that this could happen. Within a few days Impermanence is back to feeling like something not that important.

Near-Death Experiences (NDEs)are one of the most popular topics in Death Q&A. For some people, if it’s not proof, at least it suggests hope that there’s something more. There is research on the topic, but it’s equivocal. Equivocal doesn’t move the Scientific Community.

I look at NDEs, OBEs (Out-of-Body Experiences)), and dissociative experiences in general as one big Rorschach test. Our own deepest attitudes about our own physical body defining us are projected onto our individual interpretations, the narrative we make up about this phenomenon we maybe think we know a little about.

I am also inclined to believe that there is more going on than just what we’re projecting. I think understanding other possible states of being starts from seeing that our normal experience of everything is a projection. Forces other than ourselves exist, but they’re buried below layers of conditioned perception.

I called on another avatar with a hashtag in his name who I remembered from a few events in the past. I asked him what the discussion brought up for him and he was right on it without missing a beat. Said that he’d been here before and he liked coming to listen to other people’s perspectives, other ideas he wouldn’t be aware of any other way. He’d heard people share things before he hadn’t imagined.

He mentioned, for himself, he really doesn’t fear death at all because he worked it out when he was younger, when his best friend died. And then he was back to broadening his views. Said it so well.

When I was through, I said, wow, maybe you just slipped the Key to the Mystery of Life in there without much fanfare — back when you said you worked out death when your friend died. You said that in, like, one sentence.

Can you talk about how you managed to do that?

He paused just a beat, then went all-in. Told us he gave up on everything. Just dropped off the earth. Was miserable and didn’t want to let go of it ever. And then I had a dream one night, he said. I met my friend, he was there, right there with me. He said he was OK. I should let go.

I woke up the next morning totally different, totally rejuvenated, he said, somewhat matter of factly. It was obvious to any of us listening. You could hear the clarity in his voice.

The Pink One was fidgeting and I gave her the mic. That’s just how it was for me, she said, with passion in her southern accent. I had not dreamed once, not once, for two years, she said. Just complete darkness, nothing else. And I am an artist, I see visions, but in my dreams since the day my mother died, not one thing.

Then there it was, there she was. And I felt like things were beginning. That’s all I can say.

Another avatar spoke up and went right into a childhood story, growing up in Cypress, the island nation(?) in the Eastern Mediterranean, contested territory, armies all around. He lived with his family on top of a hill and that’s where the dream took place, except he had to go down from the hill to get something of great value, to a child, which was a He-Man costume. On the way down, he fell into something, which he understood to be dying.

He said he knew it was about a Quest, in five year old terms. I asked him if he’s kept on Questing as an adult anyway, even though you can die? He said yes but I had the feeling there was more there, for another time.

Other avatars popped in, some stayed, some left. Non-linear event.

I said, I think we’re not quite getting Impermanence right, maybe not so much what it means as, like, when it becomes operative. I mean, it can’t be now, right? Because we’re here having this conversation. So when does Impermanence start? Sometime in our late 70s?

The pandemic has brought Impermanence closer for everyone, Ryan said.

Sure has and closer is real, I said, especially indoors without ventilation.

Death Q&A is a weekly EvolVR event in AltspaceVR

I also write an occasional piece on sub-stack: tnickel32.substack.com/

Why’d You Call it Death Q&A? was originally published in AR/VR Journey: Augmented & Virtual Reality Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.