For me, as a physician, there is no surer evidence that something glorious and wonderful lies beyond our mortal existence. Death is not an end. It is a new beginning. It entails a magnificent reunion with God and all the wonderful souls that we've ever loved or will love. This is our destination when we pass over. Dying is not the end but rather a shift to a fresh form of life, a new and glorious manifestation of ourselves. In this regard, death would seem to be just another dramatic transition in a continuing cycle, similar tin quality to birth. We jettison our mortal shell as we pass from one life form and consciousness to another, more wondrous than the latter.
It is all too easy and too simple to disdain as "superstition" everything one cannot understand, but the ancients themselves knew very well what they meant when they used symbolic language...the Spirit can always come back to breathe fresh life into the symbols and rites and give them back their lost meaning and the fullness of their original virtue.