Many times I am asked the question, "What happens after I die In this article, I would like to raise a different and perhaps a more important question, "What happens to me after a loved one dies, even as I live?"

A story is told about two passengers on a bus along a bumpy back road in the South. In one seat a wispy old man sat holding a bunch of fresh flowers. Across the aisle was a young girl whose eyes came back again and again to the man's flowers. The time came for the old man to get off. Impulsively he thrust the flowers into the girl's lap. "I can see you love the flowers," he explained, "and I think my wife would like for you to have them. I'll tell her I gave them to you." The girl accepted the flowers, then watched the old man get off the bus and walk through the gate of a small cemetery.

Surviving the death of a loved one is just that — "surviving." The man on the bus honored the memory of his wife by giving to another. Even in the act of mourning, he did a good deed. This brought him comfort and his deceased wife tribute. When we take the best qualities of the person who is deceased and allow those traits to enter the very fiber of our being and become part of who we are, then our loved one lives on in the deeds we perform in this life.

Those who came before us sleep within our souls. The love they gave us we should, in turn, give to others. The joy they brought to so many, we should supply in abundance for those around us. Their unique spirit will always be theirs, but if we can take but a glimmer of their light and add it to ours, they live on and the world becomes that much brighter.

"What happens to me after a loved one dies, even as I live?" The answer to the question is in the last word - "live." We do have a choice of what happens to us when someone we love dies. We, ourselves, can die spiritually or we can find a new way to live. Death does, in fact, take a part of who we are, never to be replaced again. But as survivors, we also have the opportunity to look at life through a totally different lens. Certainly any of us would rather keep our old lenses, but life and death work in ways well beyond our understanding. As we don a new perspective after a death, may we continue to live in the positive spirit in which our loved one, now gone, lived.

As we don a new perspective after a death, may we continue to live in the positive spirit in which our loved one, now gone, lived.