Living the Presence of the Invisible and the Continuity of Love
Some books emerge from reflection. Others emerge from what life asks us to carry. Beyond the Veil was born through grief, remembrance, love, and the realization that physical absence does not necessarily end our relationship with those we have loved.
Through personal reflection and presence-centered writing, Marie-Dominique Rail explores continuing bonds, memory, signs and synchronicities, spiritual questions, and the many ways love may continue to inhabit our lives after loss. The book makes room for mystery without prescribing a belief.
Why did you write Beyond the Veil?
Beyond the Veil was born during a period when illness and grief became deeply intertwined in my life. In 2023, while undergoing cancer treatment and a long period of medical isolation, I lost two people profoundly important to me. My godmother, Constance, died in June. Two months later, my brother Jean-François died at forty-six. I could not be physically present in the ways I would have wanted. I was trying to survive while learning how to live with absence. I found myself asking: What remains when someone we love is no longer physically here? What happens to the relationship? Can love continue when physical presence cannot? How do we carry absence without allowing it to become the entirety of our relationship with someone? The book grew slowly from those questions, as a place where grief, love, memory, spiritual experience, and mystery could sit beside one another. Looking back, I understand that it was written through grief, and ultimately about love.
What does the title Beyond the Veil mean to you?
The veil represents a threshold: between the visible and invisible, between what we know and what we cannot know with certainty, between physical presence and the ways a relationship may continue within us after someone has died. I chose the word because it leaves room for mystery. It acknowledges that human experience sometimes brings us to the edge of what we can explain. For me, the title is an invitation to remain present at that threshold with openness, humility, and wonder.
Is Beyond the Veil a book about grief?
Yes. It is also about relationship, remembrance, absence and presence, the ways people we have loved continue to shape us, and ultimately love. Grief is one doorway into the book because it reveals how deeply we have been connected. I wanted to explore what happens to love when the person we love is no longer physically here.
What surprised you most about grief?
I discovered that absence and connection could coexist. The phone no longer rang. There would be no new conversation or ordinary moment together. Those absences were real, and they hurt. My relationship with those I had lost remained in memory, in what they had taught me, in the person I had become through loving them, and occasionally in dreams, synchronicities, or moments of unexpected closeness. I became more willing to notice that I continued feeling connected. Grieving may involve discovering how love continues when the form of the relationship has changed.
What do you mean by “the continuity of love”?
Death can end physical presence without necessarily erasing relationship. The people we love become woven into us: their words, gestures, values, memories, traditions, and ways of seeing the world. Their influence may appear years later in our choices or in how we love another person. There may also be experiences understood spiritually—dreams, signs, synchronicities, or a sense of presence. I leave room for these without insisting upon a single interpretation. The continuity of love can hold what we understand and what remains mysterious.
You write about signs and synchronicities. How do you approach them?
Very gently. After loss, people describe experiences that feel meaningful: a dream, a song at an unexpected moment, a familiar symbol, an unusual coincidence, a sudden sense of presence. I do not believe it is my role to tell another person what such an experience must mean. We can receive it, notice what it awakens, and allow some things to remain unanswered. Signs and synchronicities appear in the book as part of the mystery, rather than proof.
Do readers need to share your spiritual beliefs to enter this book?
No. This mattered deeply to me. Readers may approach these questions through faith, spirituality, philosophy, psychology, continuing bonds, personal experience, or curiosity. Some may understand experiences spiritually; others through memory, attachment, love, or enduring influence. I wanted room for both. Mystery remains spacious when we approach it differently.
How can continuing a bond with someone who has died coexist with moving forward?
Continuing to love someone and continuing to live can belong together. We can remember someone and create new memories. Carry grief and experience joy. Speak their name and make plans for tomorrow. Honor what was while remaining open to what is becoming. Moving forward can mean discovering how to carry love differently while continuing to inhabit our own life.
How does Beyond the Veil connect with Semper Fidelis and Beyond Recovery?
I did not plan the three books as a trilogy. Their relationship became visible afterward. Semper Fidelis began with the return inward, remaining faithful to what is essential when life becomes uncertain. Beyond the Veil entered grief, absence, and the continuity of love. Beyond Recovery explored what happens after survival, when integration and reconstruction continue. I think of their movement as Presence. Love. Reconstruction. These are interconnected passages of one life. Healing, grief, love, and transformation often live beside one another.
What do you hope someone who is grieving experiences while reading Beyond the Veil?
More than anything, I hope they feel accompanied. Grief can be profoundly intimate, even when we are surrounded by loving people. I would want the book to offer somewhere to rest, remember, question, and encounter the possibility that continuing to love is a natural part of living with loss. If someone closes the book feeling a little less alone with what they carry, that would mean a great deal to me.
Has your understanding of Beyond the Veil changed since you wrote it?
Yes. At first I understood the veil primarily as something between this world and whatever may lie beyond it. Its meaning has widened: between what can be spoken and what can only be felt; memory and presence; certainty and mystery; the person we were before loss and who we become afterward. Continuing bonds can become part of how we return to life. Love can remain as life continues to grow around absence.
If readers carry one message from Beyond the Veil, what would you hope remains?
You do not have to stop loving in order to continue living. The form of a relationship may change profoundly after death. There may be grief, silence, questions, memories, closeness, and enormous absence. We can carry what was given to us, remain open to mystery, and continue living. For me, this is a deeper trust in the enduring capacity of love.