Malcolm-Jamal Warner: The Peace Beyond the Fear

Malcolm-Jamal Warner, affectionately remembered by many as Theo, transitioned from this life on July 20, 2025... the same age, 54, as my mother when she passed. Her death, sudden and jarring, shook our family to its core. I was just 19. None of us (my brother, my father, or I) knew how to navigate a world without her, let alone how to pay a bill. She was the heartbeat of our home, and when that heart stopped, time seemed to halt with it. In my grief, I began a quiet, desperate search for understanding. I turned to books...Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s insights on death, Raymond Moody’s near-death studies, and Dr. Michael Newton’s "Destiny of Souls," which opened a wider door to the unseen.

In the stillness of those first months, I’d often sit alone in the dark, meditating, pleading with the universe for a sign that she was okay. I wanted—needed—to hear from her. Nothing came. Silence. But about a year later, as I nodded off behind the wheel, her voice rang out, clear and urgent, calling my name. She was there, protective, present.. just as she’d always been. In life, my mother hovered like a shield; in death, her spirit did the same, without ever trespassing against my free will. Four decades have passed, yet I feel her in the rhythm of my days, especially when life rises and falls like an unpredictable tide.

Through that journey, I learned that the study of death is inseparable from the study of energy, of the cosmos, of the elemental cycles that shape existence... water, carbon, nitrogen. Death is not an end but a return, a transformation, an unbinding from the limits of flesh. Once you begin to grasp that, the fear starts to fade. Dying, I came to realize, is far easier than being born. Birth is loud, jarring, and painful; death, by contrast, is a slipping away into something quieter and far more beautiful.

And here's the truth no one wants to admit: no soul who’s truly crossed over... who has felt the warmth, the light, the unimaginable peace of the heavenly realm... is rushing to come back here. Not to this world riddled with cruelty, loss, and confusion. They’ve returned home. So why do we, the living, cling so tightly to the fear of what is inevitable, as if it were a punishment rather than a release? If we truly understood what awaits, we’d mourn less and live more... deeply, freely, and with the grace that comes from knowing none of this lasts forever.