In the dying experience, people come face to face with their mortality. Dying people begin to reflect over their life and feel the effects of the life they have lived. As each experience is pondered, an accumulation of experiences creates a perspective. Each perspective builds upon another. An accumulation of perspectives in a lifetime is called wisdom.

This collective wisdom is a series of choices that creates patterns and themes in a person's life. These patterns are endless streams of conscious awareness that connects a person to his or her past. Once these memories are retrieved into the present through stories and silent reflections of the imagination and heart, a person's soul is retrieved and focused in the present. The possibility for a person to project, imagine, and feel intuitively the grace that lies behind such reflection enables a person to surrender his or her soul to grace. It is here that a person's capacity to die into grace moves into his or her soul, deeper into what has infused one's life with love.

In this movement from sound to silence lies eternity. The movement into silence releases our imagination to soar toward the heavens and experience the presence of our loved one again, and our heart goes within to feel the impulse of life generated by our loved one who has died. Through tears of sadness and peace beyond human understanding, an inner connection fills a loved one's body with the inner life of the deceased.

Many of us wander through this world seeking something just beyond our grasp. Then, we find that the real treasures we have been seeking are within us. Someone once said that there is no way to happiness, rather happiness itself is the way. As we age material wealth and prestige are not what we tend to value the most. Instead, we look for something far more than material illusions to bring us peace and joy. We look for courage, hope, faith, and love. The human quest is a journey into the sacred. Eternal values are revealed that sustain us through life and through death.

Often, we come to know with time that we receive far more from life than we give to it. When we come to the end of life, we gain an inner strength of heart and of soul. We find the greatest treasure of all. We find eternal peace.

Loss manifests intrinsic values shared. They prepare us for an eternal relationship death cannot separate us from. Our loved ones who have gone before us and those behind us are our family. We belong to a family whose roots reach into infinity itself. As such, our journey of living leads to what has no beginning nor an end. Insodoing, we find ourselves entering into a much grander vision of ourselves living inside the human race. Here, there is no black or white, yellow or red, male or female, or any other appearances of separation. This is the place where no place can be found. It is eternity itself. It is our soul.

We are on a journey into knowing who we are. We are on a journey to the source of creation and the Creator who brought our lives into being. May our Creator give us strength, grace, and hope for our journey.

Samuel Oliver, author of, "What the Dying Teach Us: Lessons on Living"