They are not gone, I just don't see them now

I cried at the death of my grandparents. I wept hard at the passing of my mother-in-law, in the middle of the corona period, when we couldn't even say goodbye in the usual way. And yet I notice the same thing every time: I go through my grief surprisingly quickly. Not because the sorrow isn't real. But because there is something that carries it.

The common comfort in a death is usually in one sentence: 'you will see each other again.' Someday, somewhere, again. I believe that too. But for me, that is not the core of the comfort. The core is something smaller, and at the same time larger: they are not gone.

I still talk to my grandparents. Not as a prayer — I don't pray to them — but simply, as you talk to someone. I don't expect an answer. I'm not even sure if they always hear me. But I feel they are still there, somewhere I can't see them right now. And conversely, I have the feeling that they *can* see me. That is a different kind of comfort than 'later, again.' It is: already now, still.

That's not just a feeling I'm making up to make it bearable. It's closer to what we believe about the afterlife than most people think. In the vision President Joseph F. Smith received about the spirit world (Doctrine and Covenants 138), the deceased are not described as people passively waiting until the end of time. They are busy. They teach each other, they continue what they started here on earth (verse 57). Death there is not a full stop, but rather a transfer to another place wherethe work — and life — simply continues.

I know what the objection is: isn't this just a psychological trick, something you tell yourself because reality would otherwise be too harsh? I take that question seriously, because it's honest. But for me, the belief in an afterlife is not separate from the question of why we are here on earth. If this life is a place to learn and grow — and I believe that — then it's logical that growth doesn't stop the moment your body gives out. It's not a consolation prize I invent to make the loss more bearable. It isa direct consequence of what I already believe about the purpose of this life.

That perspective also gives something smaller, but precious: the hope that I will one day see my children again without the limitations they currently have to live with. That is not a side issue for me. But it is also not what this piece is about — it is just one of the places where that 'they are not gone, and it continues' becomes most concrete for me.

I'm not saying that grief disappears because of it. Loss remains loss, and I'm not going to pretend that my mother-in-law's tears were less because I also believed somewhere that it wasn't a definitive goodbye. But it does make a difference whether you believe it stops, or that it's a phase. One leaves you only with a void. The other leaves you with a void and a direction.

Where do you stand on that yourself, when you think of someone you've lost? Is that person gone for you, or somewhere you can't reach right now?

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Isabel and I discussed this topic in more detail in episode 81 of our podcast The Mormon Closet. You can watch or listen to the episode here: