“It is very beautiful over there.”  Thomas Edison, on his deathbed, describing a vision he was having.

“Oh wow! Oh wow! Oh wow!”  Steve Jobs, on his deathbed, last words uttered.

Yes, losing a child is a terrible thing.  Attending your own child’s funeral has to be the most devastating, surreal and painful event you could ever live through and yet, somehow we have, and some of us more than once! What’s worse is that we now get to go through the rest of our physical lives without them here to share the events and milestones of a lifetime, but, I ask you, what is a lifetime? Is it merely what takes place between the forceps and the stone?

I agree with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who said, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”  I believe that what takes place between the physical birth and death is a brief chapter in the much longer lifetime of the soul, which is eternal and therefore cannot cease to be. Let me put it another way: There is no end to who and what you are….no end, only a change of form.

This knowledge, this awareness of the bigger picture is necessary in order for us to continue our lives on earth in a positive way.  According to Eben Alexander MD, author of “Proof of Heaven—A Neurosurgeons’ Journey Into The Afterlife,” “Heaven makes us human. We forget it at our peril. Without knowledge of the larger geography of where we came from and where we are going again when our physical bodies die, we are lost. That golden thread is the connection to above that makes life below not just tolerable but joyful. We are lost without it.”

I believe this is true. In a sense we have all been a little lost, wandering through our lives without an accepted awareness of that “larger geography of where we came from and where we are going again when our physical bodies die.”  I would have been a much less frightened person if I had an understanding of this!

Having a child or children-in-spirit propels us in the direction of spiritual exploration. Because what I call “The Parental Mantra” (Where is my child and is he or she okay?) never ceases to be, we are constantly urged to answer those two questions and that inevitably leads us to spirit. What I have learned is that a beautiful life in spirit awaits each of us and that there is absolutely nothing to fear in death.  I believe that Oliver Goldsmith was indeed correct when he said: “Death when unmasked shows us a friendly face and is a terror only at a distance.”

As I see it, I have a little more time here on earth before I make the crossing and am reunited with my loved ones-in-spirit. I am comforted to know that although everything is impermanent in the physical world, “There is a larger world behind the one we see around us every day. That larger world loves us more than we can possibly imagine and it is watching us at every moment. Hoping that we will see hence, in the world around us, that it is there.” (Eben Alexander MD)

While I remain here, I will stay open to “that larger world” and allow for connections with Danny and those I love-in-spirit, to take place. I urge each of you to devote some time to this exploration too, for the more we learn and open up to the spirit within and around us, the more we are able to heal.

by Sheri Perl

www.sheriperl.com