By Suzie Kurz

When my father died of a heart attack, even if I wanted to go home to the Philippines, I couldn’t.

I sorrowed painfully, remembering how my father worked all his life, striving so hard on our farm with a primitive single plow, pulled by a carabao (water buffalo) day in and day out, to ensure that all his eight children finished university in order for them to have a better life and make a difference in this world. I remembered how he taught us to respect resources and how he strove to save every penny for our education.

But Fred, my husband, and I had just started building our dream home in Toronto. It was to be a passive solar house, and we were the contractors for the first time. We were new to this venture and needed to be together to make all the decisions regarding the construction.

A few weeks after my father passed away, while asleep, I had an experience in another world. I found myself on a beautiful coconut plantation. Tied between two coconut tree trunks was a hammock where my father was lying comfortably and swinging gently with the breeze. Surprised and elated I ran to him with tears rolling down my cheeks.

He said, “Oh, you are here! I’m fine. Don’t cry.”

I said, “I am so sorry I couldn’t come home to be with the family at your funeral.”  I hugged him.

He said, “Look around, see my beautiful coconut plantation.”

When my father was still living in this physical world, he started planting coconuts but he only managed to plant a few trees before he departed.

Suddenly, I heard a chugging sound of a tractor, I turned and there was my brother Carlos, who had passed away two years earlier. I ran to him. Seated high on his tractor wearing a wide brimmed straw hat and looking down at me with a winsome smile said, “See, I told you, I will join papa to do farming one day, and here we are!”

The scene slowly faded away and I woke up. But that experience was so real, I cried with joy. It remains vivid to this day, nearly 40 years later. I always knew that life continues after the physical body dies. This experience with my father and my brother proved that.

I believe a person brings his or her state of consciousness into the new world that they move into. Our aspirations are recorded in our transcendental selves and therefore are taken anywhere we go.

I am truly grateful for this experience.

© Suzy Kurz, 2017

Perhaps Suzie’s story reminds you of an experience that helped reassure you that your departed loved one has not truly “gone”, just moved on to another existence. The Meaning of Forever Project is collecting stories from people like you. Our aim is to demonstrate, through your stories, the continuity of life; that neither life nor love ever ends. See more about The Meaning of Forever Project here. To see more stories like Suzie’s, subscribe to our Blog by clicking the button to the right of this story, or go here to see previous posts.