Coming Back To Life
4/25/202533 min
In this special episode of the podcast, Anderson reports from Rome following the death of Pope Francis, and speaks to religion professor Elaine Pagels who lost both her 6-year-old son Mark and her husband Heinz.
Visit the All There Is online grief community at cnn.com/allthereisonline and watch the video version on YouTube.
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First 90 secondsAnderson Cooper· Host0:00
[singing] "Death is not the end of everything, but the beginning of something." Pope Francis wrote those words in February. "A new beginning," he called it, "because," he said, "we'll experience something that we've never fully experienced, eternity." I've been thinking a lot about those words the last few days while I've been working here in Rome. I hope he's right, that death is a new beginning. I'm not sure what I believe about what happens to us after we die, but I am certain that when someone we love dies, it is a new beginning for those of us left behind. The good news, which I've learned through doing this podcast, is that the death of someone we love doesn't have to be the end of our relationship with them. We can still talk with them, walk with them, hold them close in our hearts and in our lives. I never believed that before. I certainly never felt it, but I do now. I feel my dad with me, part of me, and my understanding of him, my love for him has deepened as I've become a father and am older now than he ever was. I still struggle to feel my brother. My sadness and pain over his death, and the distance that existed between us before it is still so great, but I hope to