Death and Relationships
“We are given each other in trust. I think people are much too wonderful to be alive briefly and gone.” Marilynne Robinson.
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When I talk with spiritual friends who have experienced the death of a loved one, I remind them that the God of my understanding does not give us an amazingly loving relationship with someone else and then abruptly take it away. Death is not a period at the end of a sentence but more like a comma. The relationship still goes on.
Our loved ones are still in relationship with us but in a way that we don’t yet understand. We can sometimes feel their presence. We often feel and know their prayers. Frederick Buechner has written about doing active imagination with those we love who have died in his book, A Crazy, Holy, Grace. We talk with them in the silence of our mind but we often can still feel their presence supporting and loving us just as they did before when they were alive.
I also remind friends that those we love are now with us, at all times, beside us, again in some form we do not understand. When they were alive, we were only present with them when we saw them physically. They are now always with us closer than we can explain.
Joanna joannaseibert.com.