Most of us, if we live long enough, will find ourselves participating in a funeral or memorial service. At many of these unfortunate events a member of the clergy may officiate the proceedings, reading passages from the Bible to comfort the survivors. Family members and special friends of the deceased step up to a podium and relate special memories. There are tears, solemn moments and occasional laughs as someone shares a humorous memory.

These are usually cookie-cutter affairs that follow a familiar pattern, but now and then there is a special moment, a moment that opens our eyes to a truth that even those Bible passages fail to reveal.

Recently, I was witness to such a moment.

Her name was Becky, and she was the recently deceased wife of an old friend.

Becky was a kind-hearted soul who was an active member of her church. She had a lifetime habit of giving, encouraging, and helping. She made trips to Honduras to provide aid and inspiration to those less fortunate. She had a circle of friends who treasured her companionship.

Those who spoke of her expressed confidence that Becky had surely gone to a heavenly reward, but there is always that unspoken question. Before you can believe in that heavenly reward, you must believe that the human spirit exists after the death of the physical body.

It is a question to which we have no answer based on human experience.

Most of us have heard stories of life after death. We have heard of those who claim to have gone beyond and returned. We have heard of stories about after-death experiences where someone claims to have met an ancestor who died before they were born. We may have heard stories of heavenly landscapes and knowledge of events that took place while the person was clinically dead.

We have all heard these stories. But they are stories that involve people we don’t know, and we have a hint of doubt. We can’t look into their eyes and judge. We can’t judge their credibility because their story is just words on a page, or video footage on You Tube. We might believe, but we just don’t know for a certainty.

That changed for me at Becky’s service.

One of those who chose to stand before the crowd and relate her experience with Becky was a childhood friend. She and Becky had been childhood companions who had lost touch in adulthood and then re-connected later in life. She spoke of the joy they shared after they found each other later in life.

Then she spoke of Becky’s last visit.

She knew that Becky had been declared brain-dead but was still breathing. And with that, there was hope. She went to sleep that night hoping against hope that Becky would recover. Sometime during the night, she had a dream that Becky came to visit one last time. At least, it seemed like a dream. Until the next morning when she learned that Becky had died, and she realized that her dream was more than a dream. She realized that Becky’s spirit had come to her to say good-bye.

Normally when we hear such a story, we might harbor doubts, but this was a face-to-face, real-time, real life narration of a real person.

And the doubts are washed away.

To each of us in that room there was an understanding, a realization. While we might struggle to define it, life after physical death is a fact. And with that understanding come a deeper, more confident faith.

And a knowing.

The spirit, the soul, the essence of a human being continues after physical death. And while we might mourn the loss from our lives, there is a promise of a reunion in that realm we call heaven. We call it a celebration of life, but it might be better labeled a celebration of rebirth – rebirth into a spiritual realm of joy where we will one day celebrate a reunion.