So what happens to you when you are dead...

It seems that these last weeks have been about religion belief and god. I talked to a couple of colleagues at work about this. One a believer, the other an ex-believer now militant atheist. Along this I read the excellent book by Gitta Sereny "Into That Darkness, From Mercy Killings to Mass Murder", about the governor of Treblinka extermination camp Franz Strandl. In this book Sereny also highlights some of the Vatican questionable actions.
As most of you will know I am most definitely an atheist, but that doesn’t mean that I don't try to understand religions or peoples need for answers or meaning in life.
On of the questions that I ask my self is what do you say to a person who has just lost a loved one? How do you justify it? How do you make them feel better? A lot of religions create a (I think false, but that’s my opinion) security for people, by stating that people are going to a better place and that you will see them again.
But what does one say from an atheist point of view, how do you create comfort without relying on better places, harps and so on?

I would love to hear your opinion. Here is mine:
The person that has just left you lives on in you and other people. Their influences, their actions, their words remain in the mind of the people that met with them.
Personally I try to listen to the learning and experiences of the people who are around me, both those who are alive and those who sadly has passed away. The one at the foremost of my mind when it comes to people who have since passed on is my maternal grandfather who died when I was 10.
His humble upbringing on a farm in Alsace, his experiences in the second WW, and his fight from under educated young man to sales director of the company he worked with most of his life, his generosity when it came to his grandchildren, his rather stubborn view on my mother’s upbringing. All this are both lessons that I should remember where I came from, that my family have been refugees (although for a short time), that there a good and bad ways to treat your children and etc.
In short that just the influence of him, of course one can argue that I pick and choose. But the fact remains that he inspires me and other people that he met. That some of the lessons he taught me, are in re-interpreted in my actions and therefore transmitted to others. He lives on in my actions.
So if you have recently lost someone, please take comfort in the fact that for some people the person you have just lost, meant something to them, taught them something. Even young children who tragically lose their life before it has even begun. Realise that, that child even in its short life time, probably inspired others to cherish their children even more, then before they passed on.
So what this mean to me? Well it means that I try to help the people that I come in contact with. That I make sure to smile as much as I can, all because I know that all that will remain of me when I go one day, is the memories of those moments.

P.S. Thank you Paolo Conte who always inspires and supplies the perfect music to write the above...