From the moment you become a parent, there are two questions that become first and foremost in your mind:  Where is my child? Is he/she okay?  Even when you are dealing with an infant who seldom leaves your side, you still get those moments.

I can remember watching my babies when they were in deep sleeps to make sure that they were still breathing.  And if I ever left them with a babysitter or at nursery school, I would wonder where they were and if they were okay.  I simply had to know.

It’s a constant vigil the undermines everything else that you do, once you become a parent.  Even when your children are a little bit older and seemingly more responsible, periodically throughout any given day you raise those questions.  When they ultimately reach the teen years, all hell breaks loose as it becomes increasingly difficult for parents to answer those questions.

However, if all goes well, despite an uneasy evening for you, your child returns to the roost and for a little while anyway, you can put those questions to bed.

What makes parents nearly lose their minds after the loss of a child is that they cannot answer those questions.  They have no clue where their child is or whether he or she is okay and that is primal agony for parents.   Much worse than missing this person is the parental hell of not being able to rest in the knowledge that their child is somewhere and that he or she is okay.  It goes against every fiber and instinct that parenthood encapsulates and causes suffering beyond our wildest dreams.

I lost my son Danny in July 2008 and have been learning how to cope with that loss ever since. I am working on book titled, Where Is My Child and Is He Okay? If it were not for the fact that 39 years ago, when I was 20 years old,  I had an extraordinary  experience with spiritual healing that demonstrated to me the presence of a spirit realm, I would not be writing this book today.

I have, however, as a student of spiritualism, been witness to many demonstrations of life after death and firmly believe in the survival of personality and I say personality because I want to make it clear that I am not referring to some vague and nebulas resemblance to someone you once knew.  On the contrary, what I am speaking of is the unique personality to the person you loved down to the last fiber, minus their physical body.

But when you really think about it…it wasn’t the hug alone that you loved but the love that inspired the hug.  And although you loved the arms that held you, it was the love that the hug imparted that warmed you so.  You see, it’s not the arms that you loved, but that which animated them, which is the love and the soul of the being inside them.

What I am here to tell you is simply this:  the soul that you love, which animated the body of your loved one, has not gone anywhere.  That which animated the body of your child is so close to you right now that you would be literally amazed! I cannot define the spirit realm as a destination in which I can say, “Your child is right here, 2 blocks west of Broadway.”  As I am still here in this body, I cannot say definitively what or where the spirit dimension is.   But I can tell you this.  It exists.  It is where our children are now and they are okay.

Not only that, you can have a relationship with your child once you understand that his or her spirit exists and desires nothing more. It is my intention in writing this book to show that this is true; that the essence of your child exists and that you can still have a relationship.  Of course it will not be the same.

You will no longer look for your child with your physical eyes but with your “inner awareness”.  But there are many ways that this can be attained and it is the best healing for us as well as them.

Tags: grief, hope