Love Transcends Death

The experience of losing my mom has stunned me with love.

Spiritual Salad is about much more than death. But my recent experience with grief has shaped my faith in extraordinary ways. I feel a deep connection to my mother, despite the fact she has died.

Many poems have guided me through grief, and I’m honored to share some of them here. Henry van Dyke’s Gone From My Sight paints a mental image I can never forget. When I think of my mom transitioning to the other side, I now often envision her on a ship, surf spraying the deck, a smile on her face, as she sails into the next realm.

Gone From My Sight

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side, spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.

I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then, someone at my side says, "There, she is gone."

Gone where?

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast, hull and spar as she was when she left my side. And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me -- not in her.

And, just at the moment when someone says,
"There, she is gone,"
there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout,
"Here she comes!"

And that is dying...
-Henry van Dyke

Sacred remembering.

In the final day of my mom’s life, I began to feel her spirit next to my left shoulder. In that moment, it felt like she was giving me a gentle squeeze and an enormous dose of strength to bear witness to her last day. And in the seven months since her death, I have continued to vividly feel her presence everywhere—especially on my left shoulder when I need an extra hug.

Tapping into the divine relationship with my mom has been an exploration of curiosity, comfort and faith. I’ve felt an urgent responsibility to keep her spirit alive in the world. I’m not alone in this desire. In The Beauty of What Remains, Rabbi Steve Leder underscores the need, writing:

“We too, we mere humans, must also actively remember our loved ones, or they too will surely die not once, as all things must, but a second, more permanent death.”

Elsewhere in the book he opines the sacred necessity of ritual, and explains that by reciting traditional Jewish mourning prayers he both furthers his own faith and tethers himself to his father.

I think of this earth-to-heaven connection as I honor my mom in so many little ways. Some of them remind me of my childhood. Crystal clear memories of her ironing nurse uniforms come flooding every time I use her iron (one of the many things of hers which I now possess). I feel her love in my chest at the turn of each season when I swap our front door wreaths to mark the transition from winter to spring and summer to fall.

Other moments feel grounded in the present. I speak aloud to her every day, particularly during my evening bath (another ritual I inherited from her). One friend has pointed out that water is known to be a conduit to the spiritual world; I do think there is truth in this, though I also know it is the point in the day when my mind is most relaxed and open to fluid communication.

Love everlasting.

Continuing a relationship with a loved one who has died can be a disorienting experience. It’s easy to second guess oneself and brush off your intuition—intuition that knows the connection is real. But as with all magic in the universe, if you can slow your mind and listen to your heart, the force of love will come roaring forward. You may hear it in a million little whispers, often in ways that are only detectable to you. My hope is that you lean right in and trust the love you feel.

The love my mom and I share is vast and powerful. It’s the essence of existence. I can’t just let that love vanish—certainly not through death, which is a mere point on the infinite journey all our souls travel. I’m still learning how to understand this new relationship. One where I can’t see my mom, but I know she’s there and listening.

When speaking about grief, many people say "let yourself feel it all.” This was hard to hear in the early days, because I wanted something more tangible. How could I know if I was feeling it all? Now I know that I was, and I am, and I will. There is no other way. And by honoring this sacred, indestructible love, my mother’s life continues on.

In Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, Anne Lamott captures this sentiment beautifully:

All those years I fell for the great palace lie that grief should be gotten over as quickly as possible, and as privately.

But what I’ve discovered since is that the lifelong fear of grief keeps us in a barren, isolated place and that only grieving can heal grief; the passage of time will lessen the acuteness, but time alone, without the direct experience of grief, will not heal it.”
-Anne Lamont

It’s not always an easy thought, but when the sadness of my grief takes over for too long, I gently remind myself that dying is a part of life. There is nothing that can be done to stop it, nor is there anything to fear. It’s simply the next chapter on which we will all embark. By allowing that thought, I’m able to touch the core of my sadness—and also move through it. It’s not that our loved ones are gone forever. Their spirits are still just as close, now in an entirely new and unfamiliar realm. It’s natural to feel deep sadness at this shift, but it’s also possible to discover the beauty in the new shape of your ever-present love for one another.

The poet Rumi, in his own otherworldly way, expresses the relationship between the living and the dead in equal parts simple and profound:

The Sweet Taste of Grief

I saw grief drinking a cup of sorrow and called out,
It tastes sweet, does it not?

You have caught me, grief answered, and ruined my business.

How can I sell sorrow,
when you know it’s a blessing?
-Rumi

When I fully sink into my connection with my mom, I feel her spirit at peace. I also feel a blinding love, one that radiates through the veil. It is my biggest source of comfort and confidence. And every day, I pray she always feels this close.

in love & faith,
anné jude

PS: I wrote this post before the death of poet Andrea Gibson this week (July 14, 2025), but yesterday I discovered their moving poem Love Letter from the Afterlife. I would be remiss not to include it here. May they rest in peace.