Dead but Not-Dead

Living this life is all about positive approaches to the challenges life presents. The same can also apply for the after-life state. I was brought up believing that the dead know nothing and that all await a successful resurrection at the 2nd coming, or an unsuccessful one at Christ's third coming after the 1,000 years are over. That was all very fine until I lost a friend 20 years ago who died of AIDS. He was not Christian and it was the first friend or acquaintance that died of this dread disease. For me at any rate, I couldn't accept the fact that he was in the ground hoping against hope to be resurrected at the second coming. It was healthier psychologically, at least for me, to think him in a positive afterlife where he was happy and conscious and free from the pain and disease that had killed him. Lately, I've been focusing on those ambiguous texts that Paul drops casually, and not on dire and dismal texts from Ecclesiastes about the "dead not knowing anything." How much better to focus on this text, "... neither life nor death can separate me from the love of Christ."