When Neelix dies after a lightning strikes him on an away mission, the doctor is unable save him. Luckily Seven of Nine still has Borg tech up her sleeve (and who knows where else). With an injection of modified nano probes Neelix wakes from the dead but is a changed man afterwards. He did not experience the great forest - the Talaxian afterlife - and no one from his family was present to welcome him in death. With his beliefs shattered, Neelix is unable to live his life again and takes extreme measures to deal with his trauma...
This is quite a decent episode about the meaning of life, about what will await us after we die and if life is worth living if no one of your loved ones will be waiting for you in the afterlife. It is about religion amd beliefs in a life that might continue in another form once you leave your corporeal form behind. While some people might find comfort in their beliefs that loved ones passed away might wait for once you have left this world, the message of this episode is, that there are friends and loved ones in your life that make it worth living. And that is the true meaning of life.