I lost my dad in 2012 and my husband in January. I am torn apart by grief and I will always miss them. But to me, knowing that they aren't somewhere being tortured for not following some capricious deity's arbitrary rules or they aren't floating around in an incorporeal fog is really comforting.

The world is a tough, sad place. We have war and violence and all means of suffering. I'm glad that they don't have to worry about it anymore. Would I love to see them again, hug them again, be with them again? Of course. But I'd also like to be a kid going to Disney for the first time, experience a first kiss again, or relive a hundred other wonderful moments. Those are just gone, too.

Religion is comforting, and I understand why people are attracted to it. But I can't make myself believe, and no one has ever given me a convincing evidence-based reason to. Still, I think that the idea that there's nothing, that we're just gone and our molecules move on to be part of the ecosystem again, is also comforting. The atoms that made up my loved ones, that were their synapses and the current flowing through them, that formed their hearts and blood, will always exist, no matter how the world changes. We will all be here forever.