'Graduated' mother watching over family

When someone has lived a respectable 91 years and their body is no longer viable, the funeral really becomes a gathering of friends and family. It becomes a true celebration of a life well lived and happiness for the hope that the deceased is rejoining departed loved ones.

On Oct. 1, my mother died. Steve Jobs died a few days later, so she has good company.

He was only 56 years old, far too young. His passing has been a gathering of the world because his ideas added so many conveniences to our lives.

Some of my grandchildren were able to put apples on his fence and witness the memorial that was spontaneously prepared around his house. It was a lovely remembrance for a genius of a man.

Realizing his own mortality, he said in an address to Stanford University graduates, "No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. "

Though his words are sobering truth, I prefer to think mother graduated rather than was cleared away. It is somehow consoling to think she is up there watching over our family. My daughter, Melissa, had a baby recently and likes to think she is Brigit's guardian angel — an angel of light giving back to the world.

My daughter-in-law Barb orchestrated a flash mob at a mall, where the crowd danced to our son Steve's favorite group "Earth Wind and Fire." It was a huge surprise for his coming birthday.

Mother peacefully passed in her bed here in Utah minutes before the flash mob began in California. Barb and I like to think at that moment my father likely came to get her with a twinkle in his eye and an open loving hand saying, "Let's go dance, Mary Ann!"

Those thoughts got us through seeing her body lying in a casket. We would look at the stiff body and think about her spirit out there dancing with the flash mob.

There is no way to prove or disprove there is life after death. Instead, people take from their own experiences and decide what they believe.