The devastating earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria in 2023 is a catastrophe that would shake every human being and remind us of our mortality. More than a week after it claimed the lives of more than 40,000 people as of the The New York Times update, rescuers say that voices are still being heard coming from possible survivors trapped under the rubble.
For those people who are still looking for their loved ones, such voices are like beacons of hope that life can still be found underneath the collapsed buildings. It is a sign that though one cannot see with certainty, there is still a link between those on the ground and those who are still struggling beneath it.
Hope is the one thing that people can still hold on to as they continue to search for survivors. It is with hope also that people continue to pray that more people can be saved despite the urgency of time.
For Those Who Grieve
The opposite may be true for the thousands of people who have already identified those that they have lost. For the fathers, mothers, sons, daughters and friends who have been taken away in an instant. For the neighbors that will never be seen looking out from their windows again. For co-workers and schoolmates one can now only see in one’s memory.
Where is hope when countless lives are lost? What could we hold on to in the face of death?
Whatever one’s personal beliefs may be, I would like to think that for every person, our relationships with our loved ones never end in death.
3 Reasons Why Our Relationships Don’t End In End
Deep within us, it is almost impossible to feel that death is the end of our relationships. No, there’s this strong voice within us all that tells us there is more than the physical death of our loved ones.
Here are three reasons why death is not the end of our relationships:
1. Our grief follows us for life
“I could not count the times during the average day when something would come up that I needed to tell him. This impulse did not end with his death. What ended was the possibility of response.”
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
Grief becomes a part of our lives after the death of someone we love. It reminds us of the people we loved, the people that will always be a part of who we are.
Our relationships may drastically change in form, but not in substance. Whether Christian or non-Christian, people have the ability to carry within them all the precious things their loved ones have left behind.
Without even thinking about the big questions of faith, people who grieve may continue to talk to their departed loved ones. We treat them not as though they’re forever gone, but as though they will always be with us.
2. Our souls are immortal
“Unable are the loved to die. For love is immortality.” – Emily Dickinson
Many religions (including the Catholic faith) believe in the immortality of the soul. We don’t cease to exist after our physical death. Our souls live on. If you are Catholic, you also believe that there will be a resurrection even of the physical body when God makes all things new.
With this, we believe that death could never cut off our relationships with those whom we love. We also have the hope that we shall see them again by God’s grace.
“He has also set eternity in their heart…” – Ecc.3:11, NASB
3. Love transcends even death
“The grave itself is but a covered bridge, Leading from light to light, through a brief darkness!”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
For Catholics, the connection with our departed loved ones consists not only of the hope of seeing them again. It also includes our faith that through prayer, we can still reach them even at the present moment.
That is why we never cease praying for the souls of the dead. If they are still in purgatory, we believe that our prayers can help them to finally go to heaven.
While it’s forbidden to contact the dead as some may attempt in the occult, we continue to talk to our loved ones believing that our love can reach them wherever they may be. Nothing is impossible with God. And through His power, love transcends even the boundaries of death.
Final Thoughts
Our relationships with our departed loved ones do not end in death. We grieve for the loss of their physical presence, but we continue to hold them close within our hearts.
It is this painful emptiness we feel that tells us we still have a connection to those who passed away. It is an emptiness so deep that it seems to be the greatest tragedy there could be. Death feels so unjust because it attempts to steal something of immortal worth.
By the grace of God, He sent us His only begotten Son so that we may be freed from the very power of death. Let us entrust everything to Him who holds our departed loved ones in compassion and mercy. May He protect the hope we have that we shall one day see them again.
“And can it be that in a world so full and busy the loss of one creature makes a void so wide and deep that nothing but the width and depth of eternity can fill it up!” -Charles Dickens
Jocelyn Soriano writes regularly on Patheos under the column “Beloved”. She also writes about relationships and the Catholic faith at Single Catholic Writer. She wrote the books In Your Hour of Grief and Of Waves and Butterflies: Poems on Grief.
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