I’ve had one visit from my mother, the night after she died. It was extraordinary (and I do need to write about it).

But where is she now?

My grief counselor–a friendly hospital chaplain named Melody who came packaged with the hospice program that my mother was part of, if only for a slender few days–talked to me a few days ago of quantum physics, of breakthrough theories of time and space, of how energy might change form but will never dissipate, can never be destroyed.

This broadminded take on metaphysics clicked so perfectly with my own expansive spirituality –and was so unexpected from a Lutheran seminarian–that I looked at Melody in wonder. I had long ago left the clutch of catechism and the drone of mass for a more open and holistic spirituality. The vibrating strings and universal energy flows embraced on the frontiers of physics, much like the vital chi of Taoists, felt profoundly and intuitively true to me–and as lyrical an entree to the transcendent as a poem or a moonrise.

I felt immensely grateful to curly-headed Melody, who had entirely dispelled my early apprehension that she might prove to be too chatty, too chummy, too Lutheran, or otherwise unable to grasp the warp of my quirky temperament, the complex woof of my blighted heart. She seemed as oddly, likeably wise as the Dalai Lama. As she offered her surprising ruminations–on “the universal sea of energy” and on “the many ways of finding or understanding grace through grief”–I had a sense of something nourishing, something necessary, radiating warmly and deeply to my core.

Grace, Melody said again; what it means is different for everyone; how you find it is by continuing on grief’s journey. Grace–I found it lovely to contemplate, both the word, which seemed to carry a balletic elegance, and the concept, shrouded for me in appealing propositions having to do with healing and affirming, soul-deepening and coming to wisdom. Grace is another term I didn’t often use, although its essence thematically suffused much of the poetry I loved best: Mary Oliver, among others.

Could I find my mother’s energy in the world, Melody asked? Could I connect with it, maybe find ways to gather and magnify it, or take parts of it into (unto?) myself? That is the way, she said, toward grace.