Reply #28: BBB-

[liberalhistorian]

I know you're not really religious, but C.S. Lewis (writer, Oxford professor, and "amateur" theologian) wrote a book after the death of his wife from cancer. It's called "A Grief Observed" (the movie Shadowlands, with Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger, was about their relationship), and it's a diary of his thoughts and feelings the first year after her death and how he dealt with it and learned to cope. It's a very moving book; those I know who've read it and who've suffered the kind of loss you have said they found it very helpful.

Personally, I believe in an afterlife; I do not believe that this is the only life we have and I believe we meet those we knew in this life on the "other side", so to speak. I had very vivid dreams of my stepbrother after he was killed, and the same with my paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather after their deaths (I was very close to both of them).

But that's just my own belief, of course, others may feel differently.