As it turned out, the plane made a safe, emergency landing and he would live to see his wife, Dantzel White Nelson, die first, in February 2005. At age 80, he became a widower, after having previously lost one of his daughters to death as well. On April 6, at 81, he was remarried in the Salt Lake Temple to Wendy Watson, a Brigham Young University professor.

Yet for all death's sting and the ensuing loneliness, Elder Nelson said it is Christ's death and subsequent resurrection that are the key to his knowledge of life beyond the grave and the belief that it is progress in the eternal scheme of things.

As a physician, he's troubled by extraordinary efforts to prolong life "that are unreasonable," like those that make headlines. He anticipates the question of what is reasonable. "Part of the reasoning is to understand that death is a necessary part of life," he says, quoting the Book of Mormon passage about the necessity of death as a vital part of "the great plan of happiness" God put in place from the beginning.

"That means to me that you better understand death is a friend. You better understand that you cannot participate fully in God's great plan of happiness without enduring the experience we call death."

Those who mourn fulfill God's command, he said, to love each other sufficiently that "they shall weep for those who die.

"If we can lift our sights to see not from our mortal perspective, but from an eternal perspective of what death is — it's life on the other side of the veil." There is great truth in the cliche that you live to die, he said, but the part often not discussed is that "you have died to live eternally."

He has observed both patients and family members who have experienced what can only be described as visitations from deceased relatives shortly before their own deaths, and said he is absolutely certain his first wife not only lives in another realm, but she is often close by. There is no diminishing such experiences as mere imagining or wishful thinking, he said.

"I have felt her presence beside me on very sacred and special occasions. I don't have to hear a voice or see a face to know that someone is there." He described it much like the experience of having her sit beside him while they traveled, sometimes in comfortable silence, or of knowing intuitively before he looked over to see her eyes closed that she had fallen asleep.

"That same feeling comes to a man when his wife is spiritually with him," he said. "There is no voice or no picture, but you know that she is there. Is the veil thin (between life and death)? Absolutely. They are not far away from us."