When Ursula awakens after her operation, she finds herself not in a hospital bed but in another phase of being—and she realizes that there is no death … and that “death is a truly simple matter.”
Unlike her life. Here Ursula always had to fight: as a child, for her mother’s love and approval; as a woman, for the love of men, with the feeling that she didn’t deserve happiness; as a single mother, against her own guilt feelings; and, finally, against her illness.
In the afterlife, Ursula encounters Celine, her soul guide, who greets her up by the ceiling of the operating room. Celine ushers her into the new world and accompanies her through frightening, confusing, and uplifting experiences. Through her past life review, Ursula gains deep insight into her being and existence. Connections within the “warp and woof” of life come to the fore, and many things take on new meaning in retrospect.
Meanwhile, in this world, Ursula’s daughter Sabine tries to come to terms with her grief and to settle the estate of her deceased mother. In the end, both manage to process their life together as mother and daughter: Sabine in this world, Ursula in the world beyond, and both together in an intermediate world that Sabine can access in her dreams.
The loss of her mother inspired the author to grapple intensively with the subject of the afterlife. The results of her research and her experience with her own grief led to this “travel story from beyond.”
Death is not the final stop. It is the transition between two worlds. Through this little story, those who are mourning will be able to experience one version of what the life of the deceased might look like … but not must—because everything could also be completely different! Religious convictions play no part here. Regardless of their beliefs and conceptions of the afterlife, readers are encouraged just once to contemplate life from another perspective and see themselves within a larger context.
