Hello, everyone. I am new to this forum. I recently lost my mother on April 5th to stage four lung cancer. She had only been diagnosed a month before. We only knew she was definitely going to die in the few days before she passed away. The two weeks that have passed since feel like a dream, but at the same time everything keeps going on without her and it makes me feel sick. I haven't been at school at all, just at home helping my dad plan the funeral, get things organized around the house, etc. I go between shock, numbness, crying, sickness, and even peace...but all of those feelings are set against the backdrop of the fact that my mom is no longer on this earth. She, who was so alive, so constant, so beautiful, so there--I didn't even get a chance to come to an acceptance of the little bit of time I had left with her.

To me, it seems impossible that this can be happening. It seems like a big joke. My dad has had prostate cancer for the past 8 years, so I have always lived with the fear of death hanging over my head, and it made me even closer to my parents. As an only child, my parents, ESPECIALLY my mom, are my best friends, and the only prayer I have ever really prayed is that they would be safe and that I would be able to be with them and take care of them. My very worst fear has come to life. I try to imagine my life continuing on, and finding peace and love in the future, but it is sickening to me to think of life and happiness going on without my mom, and sometimes I just feel like I should cease existing, too. I think the only real reasons that I haven't seriously considered that are my dad, who needs me, and the fact that I really do love life. But I really want to be where she is.

I imagine that these are all normal feelings, and I don't really want them to go away. But I feel like to be able to go on with life at all, I must gain some sense of a greater purpose. I feel like that is why my dad is able to go on with life more than I am. Though he loves her more than anything else in the world, I know he has faith that he will be reunited with her in heaven. I don't have such faith. My parents are devout Christians, but I fell away several years ago, because it did little for me spiritually, and my intellectual side kept refuting it. I believe that I have spiritual inclinations, and I have since explored things like the divine unity, ancestors, transcendentalism, and other mystical traditions. But my rational side keeps taking away any comfort I might find in those things by proclaiming that all the evidence points to what is essentially materialism, even nihilism. Both science and traditional religion are failing me in my hour of need. I feel so lost. I feel so far away from my mom. Can someone offer me any guidance?