07/27/2026
One thing I’ve been thinking about lately as a medium is an analogy for life, death, and the people we love who have gone before us.
It reminds me of being a child in gym class, playing dodgeball or some other team game.
At the beginning, everyone is there with us - our best friends, our classmates, our teammates. We’re all caught up in the same game together. But as the game continues, one by one, people get hit by the ball and have to leave the court.
We’re disappointed to see our teammates go. Sometimes it changes the entire feeling of the game. But we’re still standing on the court, so we have to keep playing.
The interesting thing is that the people who left haven’t disappeared. They’re simply no longer participating in the game in the same way we are.
They’re on the sidelines now.
They can see us running around. They can cheer for us. Maybe once in a while, someone calls out, “Watch out!” and we turn just in time to see the ball coming.
But they can’t step back onto the court and play the game for us. If they did, it wouldn’t really be our game anymore.
In some ways, this is how I’ve come to think about our loved ones in Spirit.
When someone we love dies, we feel the absence of having them physically beside us. And somehow, despite that enormous change, life continues asking things of us. We still have decisions to make, experiences to have, mistakes to learn from and a life that remains ours to live.
But every so often, something happens that makes us wonder if those we love are really as far away as they seem.
A song plays at exactly the right moment.
A photograph we had forgotten about suddenly turns up.
A familiar scent appears from nowhere.
We have a vivid dream that feels different from an ordinary dream.
Or perhaps, in a much bigger moment, someone hears a familiar voice telling them to stop, turn around or pay attention - only to realize afterward that listening may have protected them from harm.
Maybe our loved ones aren’t meant to play the rest of the game for us.
Maybe they are simply on the other side of the court now - still loving us, still interested in how our story unfolds, occasionally finding little ways to remind us that they’re there.
And perhaps part of being alive is accepting that we cannot spend the entire game staring toward the sidelines.
We can look over sometimes.
We can smile when we feel them cheering us on.
We can listen when something meaningful catches our attention.
But ultimately, we still have to turn back toward the court and keep playing.
Because, for now, this is still our turn.
And perhaps that’s one of the comforting ways we can think about those we love who have gone before us.
They may no longer be standing beside us in the same way, but that doesn’t mean the love between us has disappeared.
Maybe every so often, they find a way to remind us they’re still there - through a song, a memory, a dream, a familiar feeling, or one of those little moments that seems to arrive exactly when we need it.
Like our teammates waiting on the sidelines, perhaps they’re simply somewhere we can’t quite join them yet - watching with love, cheering us on, and reminding us in whatever ways they can to keep going and experience all that is still here for us.
And when our own time in the game is eventually finished, perhaps we’ll understand that they were never as far away as they seemed. 🩵
