Answer

What Happens After We Die?

Someone has died, or you are afraid someone will, and the question stops being theoretical. What you want to know is not the doctrine in outline. It is whether they are still themselves and whether you will see them again.

Your spirit separates from your body and keeps living, as you, with the same memory and personality, in the spirit world. Then, because Christ rose, every person will be resurrected: spirit and body reunited permanently. Yes, they are still themselves. Yes, you will know them.

Eternal Truths

Death changes where a person is, not who they are. Alma taught that the spirits of all people are received home to the God who gave them life, and that the righteous are received into a state of rest and peace (Alma 40:11-12). Amulek warned that the same spirit which possesses your body when you leave this life will have power to possess your body in the eternal world (Alma 34:34). You go on as yourself (Spirit World).

The Resurrection repairs everything mortality did to a body. Paul wrote that as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Corinthians 15:20-22). Illness, injury, age, the years someone lost. Whatever the last months took from someone you loved is not the state they are in and not the state they will be raised in (Resurrection).

Being together forever is a covenant relationship rather than an assumption. Jesus taught Martha about resurrection while she was standing in her grief, before she had composed herself (John 11:21-27). The sealing power is what binds a family beyond death, which is why the temple sits at the centre of a Church that talks constantly about families.

What Can Make This Confusing?

Knowing the doctrine does not exempt anyone from grief, and people are often surprised by that. Believing you will see someone again and missing them unbearably are not in conflict. Expecting the first to cancel the second only adds guilt on top of grief, and it is a heavy thing to carry at a funeral.

Questions to Think About

• What am I most afraid of about death, put into actual words?
• Am I treating grief as a sign that my faith is not working?
• Whose sealing or ordinance work have I been meaning to see to?

What You Can Do

Read John 11:21-27 this week and notice when in the conversation Jesus gives Martha the doctrine. Then do one concrete thing for someone who has died or someone who is grieving: a name to the temple, a visit, a story written down for the family. The essay behind this answer covers the spirit world and the Resurrection in more detail.

Jesus Christ broke the grave open first so that nobody would have to go through it alone or permanently.