Looking westward at sunset over the Mediterranean from Tel Aviv, just a few miles up the coast from where I\u2019m currently sitting at just past sunset.\u00a0 \u00a0(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I just sent the note below to a niece and two nephews, the three children of my late brother and his now also-departed wife, and, indirectly perhaps, to their children and grandchildren.\u00a0 I thought that somebody else might also find a little value in it, or take some comfort from it.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I want to say how sorry we are about the passing of your mother, grandmother, and great grandmother.\u00a0 Words are inadequate.\u00a0 In a way, though, we have little else to offer.\u00a0 Most of what we say and do, most of what we usually think is important and worthwhile, shrinks dramatically in the face of losing a dearly loved person.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s difficult to think of her as gone; she was (at least, as seen from my fairly distant vantage point) so remarkably unchanged over the years, until (of course) her sudden and surprising recent health crisis.\u00a0 She seemed ageless.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s natural and appropriate to grieve over your loss.\u00a0 But I hope that you\u2019ll soon be able to reflect, too, on what you were so fortunate to have had<\/em>.<\/p>\nBoth of my grandfathers died before I was born, so I never knew them.\u00a0 And then both of my grandmothers died when I was five.<\/p>\n
My maternal grandmother had been living hundreds of miles away from us, in Utah, and I\u2019m unaware of having any personal memories of her.\u00a0 What I do<\/em> \u201cremember,\u201d I think, stems merely from photographs of her.\u00a0 Curiously, what seems to me one of my earliest memories altogether comes from the time of her funeral.\u00a0 The memory is very brief and vague:\u00a0 It involves only my being out in the sunlight on the lawn in front of the funeral home in St. George.\u00a0 Just that.\u00a0 A glimpse.\u00a0 I don\u2019t even remember what I was doing.<\/p>\nOf my paternal grandmother, I recall only a voice\u2014somewhat \u201cbreathy\u201d and tremulous, as the voices of some very elderly people become, and with a thick Norwegian accent.\u00a0 For her last several years, she lived about thirty minutes away from my home in southern California. \u00a0But is it really the voice of my grandmother that I\u2019m remembering?\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure.\u00a0 I think that it may actually be the voice of her younger sister, Christina, who ultimately lived to be 104 and who once visited us for a while in California when I was quite young.\u00a0 I still have distinct images from that visit in my mind; curiously, she gave me an upright figurine of a Royal Canadian mounted policeman, in a cardboard box with a transparent, clear plastic front.\u00a0 Presumably, she brought me that gift because she lived up in North Dakota, not too far from the border with Canada.\u00a0 I never removed it from the box, but it sat on a shelf in my bedroom for a long time.\u00a0 I wonder where it is now.<\/p>\n
I never missed having grandparents.\u00a0 In a sense, I\u2019d never really had any.\u00a0 As I grew up, though, and as I saw other kids my age going off to grandparents\u2019 houses, taking vacations with Grandma and Grandpa, and the like, I sometimes idly wondered what it would have been like to have had that additional dimension in my personal life, in my family.\u00a0 My wife had grandparents in attendance at our wedding.\u00a0 My children, well into their thirties, still have a grandfather.\u00a0 He lives on his own and remains quite sharp in his ninety-seventh year.\u00a0 We visit with him frequently.<\/p>\n
What I\u2019m trying to suggest, at this difficult time, is that you and your children have been very fortunate to have had your mother with you as long as you did.\u00a0 The loss is the greater for you now precisely because<\/em> she\u2019s been actively present in your lives.\u00a0 As the pain begins to subside\u2014and, although I know that there are moments when you think it impossible, it will<\/em> subside\u2014I hope that that very great blessing, of having had her with you and with your children for enough time that many of them will retain memories of her, will become more and more comforting to you.\u00a0 And I hope that it will inspire you to continue to try to make memories for your own children and grandchildren.<\/p>\nYou three children are now the patriarchs and the matriarch of your families, at least in this line.\u00a0 The generation that raised you is gone, or is going.\u00a0 And you, too, will eventually recede into the past\u2014as will I (probably much sooner).\u00a0 With this in mind, we should try to leave a positive legacy, not just of material things but, beyond those basic needs, of stories and experiences and eternal family ties.\u00a0 (The Restored Gospel is so precious at times like this!)<\/p>\n
In the meantime, though, I want to share with you a poem written by the American author, educator, diplomat, and clergyman Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933);<\/p>\n
\nI am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side,
\nspreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts
\nfor the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.
\nI stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck
\nof white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.<\/p>\n
Then, someone at my side says, \u201cThere, she is gone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gone where?<\/p>\n
Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast,
\nhull and spar as she was when she left my side.
\nAnd, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.<\/p>\n
Her diminished size is in me \u2014 not in her.<\/p>\n
And, just at the moment when someone says, \u201cThere, she is gone,\u201d
\nthere are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices
\nready to take up the glad shout, \u201cHere she comes!\u201d<\/p>\n
And that is dying.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I expect that my brother was there in the welcoming party when your mother (your grandmother, your great grandmother) arrived.\u00a0 In my mind, I see him happily exclaiming \u201cHere she comes!\u201d<\/p>\n
The sadness on our side of the veil is equaled\u2014actually, I believe, it is far surpassed\u2014by the joy on the other side.\u00a0 The books are balanced.\u00a0 In fact, owing to divine grace, they\u2019ll be far more<\/em> than balanced\u2014and in our favor.\u00a0 If we can at least try to keep that fact in our minds, it will, I think, help us to make a quiet peace, over time, with the temporary loss of those we\u2019ve loved.\u00a0 Our reunion there won\u2019t be temporary.\u00a0 It will be eternal<\/em>.<\/p>\nPosted from Bat Yam, Israel<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 I just sent the note below to a niece and two nephews, the three children of my late brother and his now also-departed wife, and, indirectly perhaps, to their children and grandchildren.\u00a0 I thought that somebody else might also find a little value in it, or take some comfort from it. \u00a0 I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":37801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[13180,1727,1104,5817,9242,11681,1101,1008,4063,1011,16257,18152,5820,5847],"class_list":["post-99270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-after-life","tag-afterlife","tag-death","tag-eternal-life","tag-funeral","tag-future-life","tag-hope","tag-immortality","tag-life","tag-life-after-death","tag-life-after-life","tag-life-and-death","tag-life-to-come","tag-next-life"],"yoast_head":"\n
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