The gravity of yet another looming family death has been pressing on my heart.

I've been thinking about Heaven and Death and What Happens Beyond for several years now, since my sister passed away unexpectedly. It's pure loss for those of us left behind. And yet life here on Earth keeps rolling forward in a way that those who lived before are slowly and methodically forgotten.

I'm having a hard time resolving this because I think that every person has Significance.

It was only a couple of years ago that I ever imagined what it would be like if there was no after-life. I have always grown-up assuming and believing that going to Heaven was the natural order. To think that we move into nothingness and completely cease to exist is terrifying. The thought sucks the air right out of my body.

And it seems overwhelmingly unfair.

Why are we wired with these emotions and goodness and spirituality if there is Nothing Beyond? The enormity of Loss is just weighing down on me, and I'm mourning the fact that the uniqueness and essence of my sister, mother, aunts & uncles, grandparents, et al simply vanished. Gone forever. Worldly goods distributed, donated and splintered out onto different paths. Long-held phone numbers reassigned. Homes dismantled and sold. Hairbrushes with their hair still intact - yet the person is gone forever.

Husband's father is in grave condition and not expected to survive through the day.

It's Deja Vu all over again.*

Husband is in terrible emotional pain and it's killing me to see him have to go through this. And all I can think about is the void that will once again enter our lives because of the loss of such an adored, significant life. Sure, we'll still have memories, but with the passing of time and the growing loss of family and friends, we move forward on Earth with holes in our hearts and the presence of these voids following our every move. The grief may be forgotten in some moments but it becomes an incessant companion until we die and truly discover The Truth for ourselves.

I miss my family terribly. Sometimes, I want to follow the cue from my son and just pitch myself down to the ground and thrash and cry and holler.

Because there's nothing I can do to stop death, and I don't want to accept that fact.

*Yogi Berra