Hope of life after death

[BellaMoon123]

I lost my mum 6 weeks ago and have become obsessed with quantum mechanics and collective consciousness because I can't bear the thought that I might never see her again.

I miss her so much, but the thought that there are things 'out there' that we don't understand is helping me to cope and get on with every day life, looking after the children etc.

I wondered whether anyone else feels this way, or has had experiences that suggest that the suffering we go through in this world, is not all that there is.

I just miss my mum so much, she was my touchstone, my confidante and best friend.

Thanks and sorry for the rambling :)
Bella x

So sorry you lost your mum op. It is unbelievably hard. I lost my mum last year. It takes a long while but the days do get slightly easier slowly. My mum told me there is a connection between passed loved ones and Robins. I haven't looked into it but I always think of her when I see a Robin in my garden.

So sorry for your loss. I too lost my mum 6 weeks ago so i totally understand about the thoughts of never seeing them again.
My comfort is i have 3 different Robin's come in my garden, I have dad robin who is chunky with a dull red breast, i have my brother robin who has a bright red breast he appeared on the fence shortly after my brother died alongside dad robin and a day after my mum died another robin appeared who had the same dull red breast as dad robin but was smaller.
I know some people think otherwise but it brings me and my dcs comfort and we always wave and say hello.

I think this is a personal thing and what ever brings you comfort is what you should follow. My brother committed suicide unexpectedly (sounds strange, but meaning we had no idea he felt like that) in 2014 and the morning he died I thought I saw him walking by the road and waved at him from my car. It was only as I passed that I realised he lived 60miles away and it couldn’t have been him, I just did it automatically. The man I saw waved back too. I later found out this was about the time he was found. I take some strange comfort in that. I can’t think about life after death as it upsets me too much to think of loved ones somewhere without us who are left to grieve for them, but I understand how it can offer comfort to some

I read a meme on Facebook recently...I usually can't bear those things but this one was so interesting. It was about twins in their mother's womb discussing if there was life after birth. It was amazing if you can find it somehow...

Sorry I can't do links but it's called A tale of two babies if you want to search for it. It really made me see things differently

I'm sorry that your Mum isn't here with you, BellaMoon123. I think it's very natural to seek meaning when big things happen. I'm a Christian, so I take comfort in Bible verses that assure me of God's love for me. It doesn't mean I always understand things around me, but I can trust that God is looking after me, even if hard things happen.

bella I’m really sorry you lost your mum. I lost my really lovely old ma around a year ago. It is absolutely the toughest thing.
She did believe - I don’t. BUT I found in the days and months after she died that I did believe very strongly that I was ‘seeing her again’ in my memories and emotions. Those will never go. To my own dying day I’ll love her and remember and kind of pay respect to what she did and how she was as a mum (not all perfect, nor me, but bloody good thank god).
That trite ‘live on in our memory’ is so true and comforting me to me.
Also found it helpful to think through that she and my dad and all older relatives and friends had gone through this same thing with their own parents etc.
Sending you support. It a really tough time for you. It’s also amazing what we manage to deal with.

Six months on for me and I understand exactly how you feel. Its unbearable to think I won't see my Ddad again. I see lots of signs that he is there, floating in thd ether somewhere. Even DM is going along with it even though she claims to not believe in it. I talk to Dad too, and so does my Auntie.

It's so hard losing a parent. Do whatever you can to bring yourself comfort.

Sending hugs.

I lost my mum 23 years ago tomorrow. I remember, looking at her dead body, an intense feeling of "She's not there any more" and a certainty that I would see her again, it was so strange. Who knows if it was just grief or something else.

But as a PP says, you do still see them in dreams. I have always found this immensely comforting.

Jesus gave us his assurance that he would prepare a place for us in heaven. His resurrection after his brutal death by crucifixion was a demonstration, for all time, that death is not the end, and that we will all be reunited with our lost loved ones.
Why not contact your local parish minister or priest for a pastoral chat, OP? They are trained in bereavement care and could be a great comfort to you. You do not have to be a practising Christian or a member of their congregation- their ministry is to their whole parish.
My own minister was a huge help to me when my husband died suddenly in his thirties. I was an atheist at the time, but the support and kindness I received, and a strange encounter with the presence of God at my husband’s funeral, meant that I joined the church as a convert, and have been attending ever since. The church community has been wonderfully supportive during the pandemic too.

I lost my dm almost five years ago. One day, in December, just after her death - so cold there was frost on the ground- I was sitiing in my kitchen feeling so bereft and a Red Admiral butterfly came and banged repeatedly against the window. My dm was a butterfly obsessive. It did make me think - and I am an old cynic.
I think I don't believe but only round the edges, if you know what I mean.

I think whatever helps you is just fine. My mum died in February 19. It's been very hard. I desperately want to believe I'll see her again but for me personally, I just can't get my mind there. So it doesn't help me

What DOES help is the absolute feeling I have that she lives on a bit in me. And I knew her so well that I can predict exactly what she'd like and what she wouldn't. I buy her flowers weekly which I know she'd approve of. I spend a lot of money on lovely things that I know she'd approve of. I've housed all her jewellery in an amazing set of jewellery boxes. Actually - it's clear my mother was a spender But I do things that I know she'd love and sometimes this helps me.

We've all just gotta do what we gotta do to get by. I'm sending you my condolences because this is a very bad stage in the grief process for you - try and have faith in the fact that all eventually will become easier

Six weeks is so very short a time and I would not wish to say that it will get better, because that is the bereavement equivalent of get a grip, however well meant or supported by personal experience. It gets better in some ways, not in others.

My DH died four years tomorrow and still, even as an atheist, wonder where he is, how could such an extraordinary person not be, which I think is possibly what your thoughts are, Bella.

Dreams of those we've lost are good, treasure them.

Many many

My condoleances. If it helps you can choose to believe whatever gives you comfort. You don't have to go to a church or follow a set of rules to want to believe that you will see your mum again.

I don't know if it helps to tell you this, but a lot of weird things happened when my mum died. I fully believe that she stayed with me for a while through some sort of consciousness (including shouting at me to wake up and get up when there was an emergency that I didn't know of six months after her death). I have no idea how it works or what happens after death or if there is a religion that got it right but I do believe that dead isn't gone forever.

My mum died in February 2019 too. It has been the toughest 16 months of my life I believe, and I've been through a lot!!
I see her everyday in all of her things, I have a lot of her things around my house and when I dust them, or see the old black and white photos or catch a glimpse of her handwriting in notes I have kept, I see her. Her smell is still on a big cushion she had, and that is my go to item when I want to be near her. I would love to think we'll meet up again (I have so much to tell her...) but for now, I do honestly feel her with me.

So sorry for your loss op. I strongly believe in life after death. Before he died my Grandfather said that his close friend had come to visit ( she'd passed away but he didn't know that ') he died shortly after. Working in healthcare I see this alot before people pass they say they are visited by loved ones. I think our loved ones are waiting for us and come and take us over to the other side when it's time. I know my little baby will be waiting for me. It brings me great comfort. So much love to you op x

I also believe we somehow persist after death. But I think not all do, some are happy to move on and some are puzzled and resistant. When I was a child I saw my piano teacher when she had died a few hours earlier and it caused upset because it was obviously impossible. But I knew I’d seen her and was very bewildered as to why the adults should argue so strongly against me.

I’m sorry for your loss. Six weeks is not long at all and I’m sure the pain is still very sharp. People leave such a big blank space in our lives when they used to fill such a large space.

I think quantum physics is fascinating and eventually we will understand so much more.

@MintyJones I'm a bit similar - I don't believe in a classic afterlife, but I know that in a very real sense, part of my parents lives on in me. And when I've lost friends I found comfort in doing things that they would have enjoyed - gardening for one person, art for another - so in a way their influence, their effect on the world lived on a little.
In another way - what made up their bodies goes back to nature and ends up in new life, so when I go, what once was me will be part of all sort of thing - grass, beetles, butterflies, tiny organisms. What was me gets to experience completely different lives.

I'm also a keeper - not quite a hoarder :D - but there are bits of furniture, even wooden spoons, that I treasure because of who they came from.

Think about the earth, how every creature works and how the whole system works together on oxygen.

I believe in God and I believe we go on.

@BellaMoon123 Sorry for your loss OP. You are in the storm at the moment and it will be very raw for you. I have lost my mum and dad in the last few years and I also became obsessed with this. However I've had personal experiences - particularly with my dad - that make me believe strongly that I will see them again.

I think the most common interaction people have is in their dreams when they feel they have been "visited" by the deceased. This has happened to me several times. Carl Jung also had a visitation dream like this about his father and this convinced him that there was some form of life after death. He wrote about it in one of his books - Dreams and Reflections.

I also think that the experiences people report with some drugs (DMT for instance) or meditation (visiting the "astral") are good evidence for there being a continued existence that is not material. And that yes we probably do join a sort of collective consciousness when we die.

This video is a very interesting interview with a scientist who has made it his life's work to think about this stuff. I found it very comforting:

I know you will be in agony at the moment, and I can't tell you that grief will end because it doesn't. But as time has gone on I have felt the presence of my parents more strongly rather than less. They will come back to you in all sorts of moments. And keep an eye on your dreams because I believe that's where the veil between different states of consciousness is at its thinnest and communication is at its easiest.

Thank you all for your wonderful replies, it’s helped to know I’m not alone in grief. Love to you all x

@scatterolight how soon til they visited in your dreams x

Hi OP. You're looking into Quantum Mechanics resonates with me. When my brother died I found myself convinced that time isn't linear, I don't even quite understand what I meant at the time. I think I was just trying to protect myself from facing up to my loss. Now (a few years later) it seems that time is in fact brutally linear. Having said all of this I'm still not entirely convinced that I won't see him again, somehow. My sense is, he is out there somewhere, and I would describe myself as an atheist. I'm sorry you've lost your Mum

@LuckyBitches would you mind explaining a little more please what do you mean by linear ?
I flit between there's no way I won't be reunited with my mum one day and that keeps me going and that she's watching over me with my week old baby etc but other days I think it's bollocks and I saw her in her coffin dead so that's it she's just gone along with her spirit and her soul

grief is utter crap and so painful

What I mean is that after my brother died, I felt that time might somehow loop back to before (I think!), or that somewhere the time he was alive still exists. I don't feel like that now, sadly. Having said this I also believe that anything is possible, so who knows? I agree, grief is horrible, but you are never alone in it (even though it can appear that way).