Jessie Gambardella - The Power of Grief

In the book What Dreams May Come I found an exert that relates a lot to what is taught in New Age Religions. It was also shown in the movie as well. Chris was killed in an automobile accident and still hangs around his old home trying to convince his wife Annie that he still exists. Her grief is holding him there because he does not want to leave her. Chris finally sees that he cannot change how she feels and decides to let go and move on.

“There was no way of getting to you,” [Albert] said. “You were so intent on reaching your wife.”
Chris: “I Felt I had to,” I told him. “She was so frightened.”
[Albert] nodded. “It was very loving of you but it trapped you in the borderland.”

In my research of New Age religions I found it interested that it is believed that humans ourselves are sometimes to blame for passed loved ones not moving on and as a result becoming, well, a ghost in a sense. In one book I found an account of a woman who had a dream that her dead mother came to her and told her that she was preventing her mother from moving on because she was mourning too much. The woman said she felt relieved after this dream because her mother was ok. It is strange to believe that we could have the power through our grief to prevent someone from moving on and the spirits know this. In What Dreams May Come it was Chris’s choice whether or not to move on and in the movie it was his presence that prevented Annie from moving on, but seeing her grief made him not want to leave.