I have written in the last couple of weeks about recent experiences and reflections about those on the other side of the veil living in the world of the dead. These events have convinced me that the dead are close, present and actually quite alive . In the last two days some stories, dreams and occurrences seem to be showing me clearly that one of the persons on the other side has moved to a new place, has possibly been freed and healed of some binding conditions. I hadn’t been thinking directly of this as a result or intention of the work I was doing to honor and acknowledge the presences of the dead, so this came as a surprise and revelation.

Indigenous people absolutely knew and talked about how the departed need our help to move through to the next places, and often they cannot do it without our help. It was common knowledge. This knowledge has been known in such articulations as Catholics speaking of our obligation to “helping the souls in purgatory.” That notion became a scandalous cause for indulgences paid to the church, so the baby of the knowledge got thrown out with the bath water largely.

It is a good time to revise modern conceptions of the dead as gone; it simply isn’t so. Our responsibilities to them continue beyond their departure. They then need us more than ever possibly. Instinctively we know this. I think our innate understanding has been suppressed by fears and paranoias about death and dying only recently developed, in the course of human history.