Even if you love the sun sparkling on the snow. in the less bright days of winter, you might lose a little faith in spring. I find myself embroiled in other darknesses, regardless of the season, but recently I had a conversation that has re-oriented me to the light!

I was privileged to hear two of my friends talk about being with their loved ones when they died.  Their stories were so beautiful. I was amazed. When my parents each died, I had not been there, and I had thought that it had been a blessing, to be spared seeing their final agony.  But my friends’ stories testified to just the opposite experience: they felt blessed to be a witness to such a wonderful, hope-inspiring part of life.

The narratives all involved people who were ill in their last months, struggling to overcome, or in the end, accept a disease that overtook them. In spite of the pain and suffering that was endured, as my friends talked of their loved ones struggles during their last breaths, the thing that all the stories had in common was that right before the loved one died, they either smiled, or said something that showed they saw something that made them happy, or a loved one that they recognized. And the friends all confirmed, there really is a light that is visible in the person’s eyes, a light which visibly goes out as the person passes away.

“When we have passed the tests we are sent to Earth to learn, we are allowed to graduate. We are allowed to shed our body, which imprisons our souls.” –Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (The Wheel of Life, 1997)

Ever since I read On Death and Dying by Dr.Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, I have sought out stories of life-after-death experiences. I find these stories not only bolster my faith in the afterlife, but give me hope that my mistakes might not completely jeapordize my “long term” future! With contemplation, these tales help me focus on my life’s meaning and purpose. Since I sometimes tend to scatter myself and my energies, this return to hope enables me to better chose how to live my life.

The chronicles of my friends corroborate the experience detailed in PROOF OF HEAVEN by neurosurgeon Eben Alexander . I found this book amazing; both in the story that it tells and the hope that it confirms in me. Cynics have relentlessly attacked this book, claiming they could prove the experience he claims he had was simply a hallucination. But here is where the leap of faith comes in.  The search for spring in the dead of winter. How can you prove the mystical and the spiritual irrefutably with scientific facts.

If you are “sweating the small stuff” or overwhelmed by whatever phase of life you are in, find one of these books, or search online for someone’s near-death-experience story. I wish for you the hope of eternal spring and the renewed sense of purpose this hope gives me. And if you have been with a loved-one when they died, tell us the story!

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