Hello Yogesh,

I am so sorry for you. What anguish you must feel over your wife's death. Death is always hardest when you don't have a chance to say goodbye and you aren't there. No words can touch your pain. I just want you to know that I feel for you.

Anything anyone says now will sound insensitive. People can't say "Don't feel bad. She's in heaven and you'll see her someday" or anything like that. That's not good enough. She's gone from your life today.

I can only tell you about what is really true now, and you will only hear what you're able to hear now through your pain.

She hasn't left you. When she was home and you were on trips, she was always with you. You knew that, even though she was physically not present. When you talked with her when she was with you, you were talking to her as a person, not as a body. You weren't talking to her forehead or her epidermis. You were talking to a part of her you couldn't see because it wasn't physical like a body. All of that hasn't changed now. She is still as much with you, but you don't have a body to refer to when you want to communicate with her.

Don't stop communicating with her. You have a different relationship, but it is as real and full as you had when she was in a body. You just have to give up on having her in a body again. That will never happen. But she is with you always. Remember her on special days. Talk with her. Look for her to communicate in ways that don't require a body. You'll see them.

I don't want to sound insensitive. This may not be the time for you to hear this, but I want to say it now because I don't know that I'll talk with you later. Life is all beginnings and endings; it is constant change. Nothing is permanent. That is what makes the experiences in life possible. Doors close and new doors open. If you become attached to anything and won't leave the closed door because you want to go back to the way things were, you will wither and die in your spirit before the closed door. Nothing can ever be as it was.

People don't leave us. They change. We're in a theater with our loved ones watching and participating in a drama on the screen. We are the people on the screen as we watch from the seats in the theater. We have joy and sorrow watching the drama. We have adventures and times of rest, beauty and ugliness. We laugh and we cry. Then, when it's over, the lights come on and we look around. Our loved ones were with us all the time and never left us, even though they were silent in the dark. They were participating in the movie with us even though we couldn't see them. And we walk out of the movie arm in arm to share what we felt as we were going through the experiences. That is what life is. Your wife is part of your future now. She is still in the movie with you and participating with you, but in a different form.

The movie that is your life will always change. It will never stay the same. If you can experience it, knowing your loved ones are always with you regardless of whether they die or suffer on the screen, then you will be happy. If you are devastated when your loved ones or your job or your house are destroyed on the screen, thinking they're really gone, you'll be despondent. But they're not destroyed. Your loved ones are sitting next to you in the dark, even though they die on the screen, and after the movie, you'll walk out together.

We have intense happiness and joy with those we love while they're alive, and we can have that in all of life even after they're not in bodies, if we don't keep looking back after doors close, but look forward in anticipation and joy to open new doors. You'll have new relationships with your children now. They'll be full and more rewarding than you ever thought possible. You'll have a new life. You aren't betraying your wife by looking forward. She's with you as much now as she was when in a body. Your joy is her joy and living a full life is what she wants for you. She loves in your love and through your love.

Love and peace, Craig