

This just came into my inbox. I know I don’t have to say this, but if you respond (and I believe she would like you to) please do so with all care and love.

Dear John, My name is [K.], and I am 20 years old. I have never written or commented before now, though I have been reading your blog for going on two years now. I think I’m writing to you now because you and your commenters just seem like such kind people, and I know you will have something wise and loving to say. My mom died late last night. She was sick for a couple of years, yet her death still managed to come completely out of nowhere. She was 59. Not only have I lost my mother, I have also lost my best friend in the whole world. My brother has lost his mom, and my dad has lost his heart’s companion of 25 years. This is the first time I have ever lost someone close to me, and I don’t know how to cope with it. It’s not really something you learn until you have to do it, I guess. On top of all that, I have a hard time believing my mom is in Heaven with God. Logically, this fear of mine doesn’t make sense, since: A) I’ve stopped believing in an eternal hell, and B) even if I did believe in hell, my mom was a Christian. So I should have no trouble believing my mom is in Heaven, right? But there is this deep-seated fear in my heart, probably instilled by all the religious teaching I’ve had growing up, that my mom is suffering even more in the next life than she did in this one. I know this is an extremely screwed up fear, but I don’t know what to do about it. I figure that if anybody can help me, you can. Any thoughts and prayers would be appreciated. Thank you for reading! God bless.

Your mom is not in hell. She simply is not. I promise you that. You fear that she is because you love her so much. When we love someone we want them to be well and safe. When a person we dearly love passes from this world to the next, it’s natural for us—especially when their passing is a fresh shock—to find ourselves fretting that the worst has happened to them.

You love your mother, and you’ve lost the ability to physically check on her—to see how she’s doing, to comfort her, to assist her, to just be with her. That loss has left you feeling profoundly out of control. And when we are out of control of something about which we care as passionately as you care about your mother, we cannot help but fear the worst. That’s just … a function of our imagination. It’s a dynamic with which all parents are terribly familiar.

But please do not for a moment mistake your fears for reality. Your mother is now perfectly fine and well. And I promise you that if you but listen to her now, she will (if she hasn’t already) fully communicate that to you. When our loved ones pass it is true that we lose the ability to communicate with them in the way that we always have. But we are then able to communicate with them in a brand new way—a real way, a solid way, a dependable way, a way that is informed by a kind of emotional truth and spiritual clarity with which we are rarely able to communicate with anyone this side of the veil.

My father died in January of 2013. And I’m not in any way exaggerating when I say that I commune with him all the time. I feel him encouraging me, watching me, loving me, enjoying life through me. His spirit is in me, as alive and real as could be.

Your mother is not in hell. She’s in heaven, looking back at you, your brother, and your dad, and feeling all the love for you guys that she ever did in this life—and more, even, insofar as now her love is utterly unencumbered by all the … stuff that life is forever piling up around us.

Let her communicate to you how very okay she is now. Whenever you’re ready, open your heart and mind to her consciousness, and she’ll be there for you: you’ll hear her voice; you’ll feel her loving presence; you’ll know that you are genuinely communicating with her in ways that words were never meant to express. Your spirit and hers will be together in the pure and unbroken way they always have been.

The love between you and your mother is not limited to this life. It endures forever. It’s just that now that love has moved into a different phase of its reality. What your mother now knows is what it’s difficult for those of us on this side of the veil to fully appreciate, which is that, from the point of view of the eternity to which she is now definitely more connected, you and her will be together again in the blink of an eye.

She is with you, she is with God, she loves you, and she’ll see you again soon. No fears that might harry you, and no wrongly taught lesson you might have learned in Sunday school, can change that. Nothing can.