I don’t believe in death. I never have.

When my mom died, I was there. I saw the slow dissolution of her body, her labored breathing, her unconsciousness. I saw her afterward in the casket, her visage severe and unsmiling, her body patently uninhabited. She died, and her body was surrendered to the flames, reduced to a couple of handfuls of ash. There is no grave for her, no headstone saying how long she lived or memorializing her character as “Devoted Wife and Mother.” But there is a tree in Arizona planted in her memory. I know I can’t call her on the phone as I used to, but I can’t shake the feeling that she simply moved away and left no forwarding address. Somewhere she still is.

As a child I remember being fascinated by my own consciousness. Though I could not remember its beginning, I was convinced that it nevertheless began. That I began. I tried to understand death as not-being, but I could never do it. Even if I thought of it as a slumber from which one does not awaken, I could see that the possibility of awakening remained. Given a loud enough trumpet blast, a loud enough shout from the right archangel, even the dead would startle again into consciousness and wonder what the hell was going on. So I have never quite believed in death—my own nor anyone else’s.

Perhaps that is why my grief has seemed so wan, not much like the grief I’ve seen around me. Of course, dear as my mom is to me, there are others dearer still whose loss would be harder to bear. If I should lose a child, for example, I think I might grieve more. Or if I should lose the love of my life, whose very soul is knit to mine, I do not know how I would bear it. And yet I know I would bear it, just as people all over the world, even those who believe heartily in death, bear the loss of those they love and go on living anyway. But even if my wife died and the fabric of my life was rent in twain from top to bottom, I don’t think I would grieve as some have grieved. At the back of my mind would be this bright hope that I had somehow merely misplaced her contact information. Of course, I would see her again. I would kiss her brow and call her “my darling” and bring her coffee, and we would sit and catch up on all the things we had seen and done while we were apart.