For some, Easter has added meaning, writes Jennifer Finney Boylan for The New York Times.

Boylan, a Devon native, lost her father to melanoma on Easter 35 years ago. He died as Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony — his favorite piece of music — was playing on WFLN, while bells rang from a nearby Presbyterian chapel.

The author, now a renowned transgender activist, grew up as a believer who focused her faith on the power of love. This came from something an elder once said during an Easter Sunday Quaker meeting.

“What does this day mean? Did Christ really rise from the dead?” he asked. “We weren’t there, so who knows? All we really know of God is what we can see in the eyes of our fellow men and women.”

And while she sometimes saw fear and anger instead of love in strangers’ eyes, Boylan has recently started to notice a change.

“After a year of worldwide death and despair, something new may be finally beginning,” she wrote.

This has helped her, even decades later, to still find her father’s spirit all around her, be it in Beethoven’s music or from the peal of church bells.

Read more about Jennifer Finney Boylan in The New York Times.