Maybe you’re thinking that my knowing Bao is already on his way back to me should be comforting me. It isn’t. Although I know it, I don’t believe it. How can I believe it? Other people don’t believe it. Other people think I’ve totally lost it. Maybe they’re right. I’m a mess.

I drive on. The sun sinks lower in the sky. The silent knowledge that Bao is on his way back to me does not ease the pain, but it’s there, and it is strong as ever. I shake my head. None of it makes sense. And it hurts so much.

You must trust yourself, especially your instincts. We live in a world of facts and data, and we expect things to make sense. But sometimes, they don’t. Knowing and believing are two very different things. You’re accustomed to trusting what you know. Now you must learn to trust what you believe. Accepting what you don’t understand creates a universe of limitless potential, where anything can happen.

Does it all sound a little bit crazy? In a sense, it is. It involves losing your mind – your rational, critical, reasoning, analytical left brain. It involves believing, rather than knowing. Your mind is important, but you are not your mind. You are something else, something bigger.

He is already on his way back to me. I know it. I can feel it. Yet I’m not comforted by this knowledge, not at all. I can’t imagine how I am going to manage without Bao. I don’t want to manage without him. I don’t want to live without him.

To me and my friends, reincarnation made as much sense as anything else. It was certainly no more incredible than atomic bombs, television and flying saucers. Although I eventually ceased to believe in the monotheistic deity to whom I said my nightly, childhood prayers, I’ve never seen anything intrinsically unreasonable in the concept of reincarnation. Everything in the universe follows a cycle of birth, death and rebirth. Why should we be an exception?

Was I simply using a psychological defense mechanism to protect myself from unbearable grief? That’s what some people might say. But I disagree. Psychological defense mechanisms are supposed to protect you from pain, and I was in terrible pain. I was heartbroken, overwhelmed by grief, despair, and loss. Knowing that Bao was coming back to me did nothing to ease the heartbreak of having lost him. That might not make sense, but that’s how it was.

I sit on the bed, staring sightlessly out the window at nothing. I want to die, and I can’t even do that because Bao is already on his way back to me and I have to be here for him.

I plod sadly through the hours, preparing meals I don’t want, rinsing the dishes and putting them in the dishwasher, collecting the mail and paying the bills. Bao’s psychic presence still remains strong, as does my certainty that he is coming back to me. But as strange as it may sound, it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. I am surrounded by pain, suffocated by pain, breathless with pain. I can’t imagine how it once felt, not to be in this constant, unrelenting pain.