I do not observe any religion.
I was not raised in a praying household.
I do not currently believe in any deities.
It is not that I reject religion; I am simply unable to find understanding or comfort in a system with which I am not familiar.
In times of loss, however, I find myself grasping for an explanation, or at least some sort of intellectual poultice or tourniquet to quell the endless tear-stained streams of thoughts and errant analyses that emerge in the night. They always seem most active in times of stillness: upon waking and opening our eyes in the morning, when we first contextualize what we see and hear and feel, remembering what has happened, remembering what is or is not; before drifting into the unconscious, as the mind often runs through what has changed in our understanding of the world that day.
But I have found something familiar and scientific to explain it all, to tell me where the breaths go, where the spirits go, what comes next:
Conservation of energy.
It explains why our love for someone can still hurt so badly years after they are gone, why a memory can still bring tears to our eyes decades after it has taken place, why someone may leave us but never quite seem to disappear completely.
That emptiness we feel, the way we turn into ourselves to see if we are doing enough and if we are enough, the refocusing of our eyes on the priorities we now find hold a renewed importance...these are all manifestations of this conservation of energy, the transformation of the magnificent and powerful force that a beautiful and full life contains into yet another force, unnamed, unperceived, that changes us all and thus changes the world, forever.
In some cases, as one we have lost now rests in peace, millions, perhaps billions, of us walking these grounds have woken to a blinding truth, a white light that exposes what he has seen all along. His light has not been extinguished; it has only exploded and multiplied into millions, perhaps billions, of lights around the world, changing and passing through bodies that will manifest this one person's force in a million, perhaps a billion ways.
Yet in other cases, the one we lose may leave us with a discrete aching of the heart that burns more acutely some times more than others, reminding us to be good to one another, and to reach out to those we feel are slipping away. His heart has not stopped, it has merely passed on its warm and generous drumbeat to those who carry his life in the form of a message of friendship and love.
As time passes and as we age, we lose more people who we loved or held near to our hearts, and no matter how stoic we are, such losses stab us in the gut. The cancers, the suicides, the accidents, and the years; we can know it's coming all our lives and still, with the last breath, we feel only shock and sudden cold.
It is not that I need confirmation of an afterlife or a reincarnation, but I refuse to accept that a life force, any life, beautiful, vibrant, full of experiences, lessons, stories, and character, can simply disappear into thin air.
I know where we go now.
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