whether you have faith or not, he is still and always will be part of you, and i know that "he is in your heart" is one of those glib things people will say to you and will probably eventually irritate you - because you dont want him just in your heart you want him physically here, but it does have more meaning than a glib comment meant to sooth you,and the first way in which that is the case is that over time you will find yourself thinking more of his whole life with you rather than focussing entirely on the end of it.
Some times you will cry at a reminder and other times smile through those tears as you take the part of that memory that maybe made you smile at the time, or maybe was something he said or did that was typical of him , even something irritating that becomes part of him that you love, and that state grows, even without that item or that song or whatever triggered it being present, and you find yourself still talking too him, thinking what would he have said and done about anything you have a dilemma over, even at a practical level what would his solution have been, what would he have wanted for you, - for me with Mark it was to go back to college and finish what i started before he got ill, i did that and much more than that original simple course, because i wanted to make him proud of me even though he wasnt here.
You never stop loving them and the bond between you changes when they are not physically here, but it doesnt break, it becomes something different.
If you imagine a bond not as something fragile but as something strong that is also elastic and moves in different directions, and through out our lives we form bonds with different people,and all those bonds are different in some way, but each one is woven into a net and so each one is equally important and doesnt become less so or disapear because we cant see it.
The second time, with Keith i was anything but strong to be honest, it was a massive struggle and i couldnt find any incentives for a long time, the Kids were grown up with their own lives and didnt live nearby,my friends were also scattered and i had only a couple here, and it felt like there was no point in my existance because there was no -one who needed me around, so i decided if i couldnt live life for myself i would do it for him, carry on doing the things he loved to do, do some of the things we said we would but didnt get round too, and a couple of things he would have liked to do and frankly terrified me, that i would not have done had he been here, but sat and watched him do but that was no longer a possability and i had to do them myself.
So even though he isnt here it still feels like he is still guiding me, not just guiding but pushing me forward, but it doesnt mean the bond with Mark isnt also still there or the bond with my mum and dad and everyone else i have lost.
When it comes to faith,
I didnt have any either but i did want to find something to believe in, so i looked for something but i didnt find it in any single cultural belief system, each one had flaws that i couldnt get past.so i found myself looking in the last place i wanted too because i thought it would trash any hope of finding a faith, science.
You might be too exhausted to think about this in detail now so i wont go into the finer details,
So we know we are made up of particles which create energy and we know energy cannot leave the planet but takes a different form, be it light,heat, kinetic movement, or by being joined with another form to create something else, which in short covers ghosts orbs tree spirits, re-incarnation angels etc - all of that can be explained by physics, the ghost being simply a collection of electrons covered in dust which take on the form of a human, etc etc - but it doesnt necessarilly explain it in the way which debunks those faiths any more, and between quantum physics and the science of consciousness it makes them more likely and it filled some of those gaps i couldnt fill just by looking at the faiths.
So my faith now is to always accept that something is a possability, and that when i feel him around me. he is not in the form he was when he was the physical person standing next to me , maybe not in the form he was last time i felt him around me, because there is a constant change of the way energy moves and changes form , but i recognise him as different from other changes in energy around me, because of that need after quantum changes for electrons to come back together to re -establish physical patterns and interactions and because of the subconscious part of us that hasnt needed to change but can have moved with us into the new form so we retain a level of awareness of each other.
And so if i dismiss that feeling as silly then maybe it is more silly to dismiss it than to just accept and cherish it . - and if i am wrong then there is nothing to lose,but there was a huge amount to gain from starting believing in something and not being comiited to one faith system alone and therefore confined within the parameters which are set by societal rules of those faiths.