I was asleep in the back bedroom of my mother’s house. It was two months after she died, and my sisters and I had spent the week cleaning up the house for sale. It was the last night I would ever spend in that house. Suddenly I saw my mother, in closeup as if in a movie. She wore the green paisley housedress she often wore, and her face was worried. “Miles,” she said in a concerned voice. Then I woke, and she was gone.

My mother was the kindest person I have ever known. “Angel” and “saint” were the words people used most often to describe her. In this, as in all things, she let her faith be her guide. Every morning she read a chapter in her Bible, followed by daily prayers in Guideposts or in Lutheran publications. She was beloved at our church and by everyone who knew her. She truly believed that when Christ enjoined us to love one another, He meant it.

Mom’s kindness was innate, but her serenity was harder-won. She was an Army nurse during World War II, assisting surgeons as they attempted to reassemble the brains of soldiers with head wounds. She talked of seeing England and France and Belgium, of the elderly Irish widow in Manchester who spent all her ration stamps to serve Mom a breakfast of tomatoes fried in bacon fat, of her introduction to pink champagne in France and the hangover the morning after. But she never spoke of the surgeries. She did tell of two of the stupider guys in her unit, who found a land mine they assumed to be inoperative and started tossing it back and forth. Their sergeant walked over to order them to stop; just as he got to them, the mine exploded. I can’t remember if Mom said she saw the explosion, but I think she did.

It doesn’t take much of an imagination to see how this affected Mom. She would worry obsessively whenever her children traveled, and send them articles, as a warning, about travelers who were waylaid by bandits or carjackers. The specter of catastrophe was never far from her mind. But, in the end, she reached a serenity that was an essential part of her faith. She had had her share of sorrows, and she had seen some of the worst the world had to offer, but she believed in a God who was good, and who wanted the best for His children. Toward the end, one of her children asked her what she thought the afterlife would be. “Honey,” she said, “whatever it is, it will be all right.”

I inherited my mother’s nervousness, but not her ameliorating optimism. For want of a better term, I am an omnist—a word I learned only recently—with a core belief in the basic tenets of Christianity. For me it’s simple: if you believe what is written in the Apostles Creed and the Ten Commandments, you’re a Christian. If you don’t, you’re not. It’s no big deal if you don’t, and there is plenty of room for interpretation if you do. The Golden Rule is universal. The Rapture and the End Times, with all the political baggage they carry, are extraneous. I’m a believer because my mother provided a wonderful example of what a Christian should be. But I have never been able to take that final step of absolute faith and trust.

I still have no idea what my mother wanted to tell me in that moment before waking, eighteen years ago. I thought it might have been one of her warnings about heart disease and diabetes, the latter of which did indeed come to pass eleven years later. But so much else has happened in those years, with me, with family, with the world. She was before me for two seconds. It did not feel like a dream, but hyper-real. Why did she leave so quickly, before she had her say? Or was it me, waking before she had a chance to say it? And why did she never come back?

Every morning I wake in terror. I see nothing to look forward to, and everything to fear. The people I love are dying; the country I love is being led to dissolution. I feel like the men torn apart by the land mine, my heart and brain exploded, my guts oozing in the dirt. I believe in the life of the world to come, because my mother did. What I doubt is life here and now. I believe my mother is there, and that she is listening. I have one question for her: will it be all right?