For 26 years, Dan Pierotti knew — really knew — that his days were numbered. In 1988 he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. In this first installment of his story, the former Lutheran minister talks about his feelings on death and the afterlife.
Although Dan didn't believe really in God any more, when he talked with his wife Judy about his death two years ago, he said, "You can't destroy matter. It becomes something else, it becomes energy. You can't destroy energy, it becomes something else. That's what I am – I'm just a bunch of matter and energy... And I believe that when I'm buried, dead and buried, ultimately all these pieces of me... will convert to some other energy, or some other mass, or some other thing. Maybe I'll be a tree.”
The original score for Dan’s story comes from composer and musicologist Freddy Knop. You can hear the entire, 28-minute version of Dan's story here.