LDSblogs.com<\/a>.\u00a0 My grandmother was mentally ill. Nobody knew exactly what was wrong with her, just that she was very strange. Back then people didn\u2019t talk about mental illness.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Recently my aunts have discussed Grandma, and they think she had schizophrenia. But there was never a real diagnosis. And her brother, my great uncle, spent a majority of his life in an institution after he tried to kill their whole family. I really wish they had both been blessed with our current understanding of mental illness. I wonder how it would have changed things for them.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/en.elds.org\/ldsblogs-com\/files\/2017\/10\/death-2421820_640-e1506546706660.jpg\")
I\u2019ve been thinking about Grandma because my friend\u2019s mom just died. She too struggled with mental illness. And as I have tried to help and comfort my friend, I remembered an amazing insight I got at my grandma\u2019s funeral. \u00a0First I have to set the scene.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Before the funeral, all the adult ladies in my family gathered to help dress Grandma in her funeral clothes. I remember thinking she looked so peaceful. Her hand felt like a sandbag. That\u2019s the best way to describe it because it wasn\u2019t like a regular hand. Such a change had come over her in death. It really felt clear to me that she wasn\u2019t there anymore.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I was choked up and turned away from the ladies gathered with Grandma\u2019s body. I didn\u2019t want to cry in front of them. When I looked across the room with watery eyes, I saw something amazing. I saw my grandma standing there, smiling at me. In life, she rarely smiled. But there she was truly smiling with real joy in her eyes. I could feel that she was glad to see us all there. I could feel that she loved me and that she was truly happy.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
As I blinked many times, thinking I had lost my mind, I saw my grandma turn around and walk out of the room to join my grandpa in the hallway. I hadn\u2019t noticed him before. He died before I was born. And the two of them left together.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s taken me awhile to process what I saw. My grandma didn\u2019t look solid when I saw her, and all I can think is that I was seeing her soul, her spirit. But the most stunning part of this was that I saw a happy woman. That was so different from the woman I knew.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/en.elds.org\/ldsblogs-com\/files\/2017\/10\/dependent-441405_640-e1506546870207.jpg\")
We used to joke that Grandma wasn\u2019t satisfied \u2018till you were crying. She would come visit and would tell these stories. She was so deeply somber, and she would sit next to you and hold your hands, and talk. And before the conversation, before the story was over you would be in tears. Every time.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
In fairness, she survived the Great Depression and WW2. She had been divorced with three little children to raise on her own. So she had seen a lot of darkness and felt a lot of heartaches. And it had affected her deeply.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, the woman I saw standing in that room before Grandma\u2019s funeral that day was not heavy or somber. It was a revelation to me. In that experience, I learned something about death. We are born as blank slates and every experience we have in life affects us. It colors our world and shapes who we are. And when we \u201cget to know\u201d someone, we are also getting to know the sum total of their experiences.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then there is the biological component. You see, most of my life my grandma had Alzheimer\u2019s. She lived in a facility for over a dozen years, and eventually died of colon cancer. The last time I saw her, she had no idea who I was. She thought I was a nice nurse. And in that final interaction, I saw her smile for the first time in my life. She looked free and happy and died a few days later.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
My theory is that when Grandma died, and she left this body behind, she also left behind all the sickness, both physical and mental. Sounds logical, right? But consider this for a minute. Illness affects us. It can affect your mood, your abilities, and your point of view. With that filter removed, we see clearly. My grandma had been surrounded by sorrow all her life. But in death, she was able to let that sorrow go. It was lifted off her.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"woman-570883_640\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/805\/2017\/11\/woman-570883_640-300x200.jpg\")
Now I need to be clear. I am NOT advocating suicide or encouraging death as an avenue to freedom. I am simply sharing what I learned that we are different people when all the heartache and illness is removed. I think this can be done through the power of the Atonement of the Savior anytime we are able to accept it. Personally, I am working to remove the darkness and heartache from my own soul while I am alive, with the help of my Savior and a talented therapist.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I wish Grandma could have had joy in this life. But I am comforted to know that she has found it in the next life. I pray that all those who had a grandma like mine can find peace knowing that when they meet again, it will be a happy time. And that their loved one will be much different than they remembered.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This article was previously published on LDSblogs.com.\u00a0 My grandmother was mentally ill. Nobody knew exactly what was wrong with her, just that she was very strange. Back then people didn\u2019t talk about mental illness. \u00a0 Recently my aunts have discussed Grandma, and they think she had schizophrenia. But there was never a real diagnosis. And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3521,"featured_media":217,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9],"class_list":["post-203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-overcoming-trials","tag-overcoming-trials"],"yoast_head":"\n
Mental Illness After Death<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This article was previously published on LDSblogs.com.\u00a0 My grandmother was mentally ill. Nobody knew exactly what was wrong with her, just that she was\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scatteringsunshine\/2017\/11\/mental-illness-death\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mental Illness After Death\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This article was previously published on LDSblogs.com.\u00a0 My grandmother was mentally ill. 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I'm Abby Christianson, a transplanted Mormon living the dream. In my life, I've lived in seven different US states and visited other countries. And the thing that amazes me is that in every place I've been the LDS (Mormon) church is the same. The people have hearts of gold, and their love for the Savior is unchanging. But for some reason, people still think Mormons are weird, backward, and sometimes even Amish. I'm here to try to help clear up the misconceptions about Mormons by showing you that we are just like you. We love our families, eat junk food, love movies, and spend time with friends. And just like you, our faith and values go deep. So join me as I keep trying to scatter sunshine everywhere I go. And hopefully, you'll find your faith in Christ strengthened along the way. Autism and more I'm also here to talk about Autism, and being an Autism Mom. There were few resources online when my son was diagnosed. So I want to be a support to those parents who are trying to figure out their child, and how best to support them. My wonderful son stretches me and helps me grow every day. I love being his mother and the things that make him unique. In 2020, every autism service stopped. So I got trained to be an RBT (Low-level autism therapist) with BehaviorUniversity.com. It has made homeschooling and doing at-home ABA easier as I understand my son better. They have some courses for parents to help them understand autism better, and I highly recommend them if you are searching. We have been home-schooling off and on for 6 years now. And it's wonderful to see my son thriving. Education and background Although my degree is not in education, I do have degrees from BYU Idaho and Southern Utah University in public relations, interpersonal communication, and marketing. I was lucky enough to get to teach a couple of freshman classes at SUU as part of my senior project. I have the best memories of those times. And it showed me how much I love to teach. While at SUU I was on the debate team. I wasn\u2019t great, but I loved the team and the feeling of unity we had. As a member of the Lambda Delta Signa sorority, I spent a year as VP of my chapter. I served on Institute Council and in leadership with my choir. And I was a member of the Lambda Pi Eta honor society. Funny enough, I was nominated as SUU\u2019s personality of the year in my senior year because I was so involved When my son was small I was part of the PTA at bus school \u00a0I even served on the PTA board and taught art classes to the kids. \u00a0I also volunteered to help out in the cafeteria. And I was a \u2018recess duty\u2019 meaning I got to be outside as a responsible adult during recess I love to write and wrote for LDSblogs.com as Abby Christianson and as Patty Sampson for many years. I took over editing LDS Blogs when our beloved editor Terri Bittner passed away suddenly from brain cancer in 2017. Then in 2020, LDSblogs.com stopped publishing after the pandemic affected their funding. But they are still online and some great stories are there if you are interested. I'm a lifelong member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I've been married for 23 years, and a mother for 15 years. I love people and creating in any capacity I can. I hope you'll join me as we navigate this crazy world we live in.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scatteringsunshine\/author\/achristianson\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Mental Illness After Death","description":"This article was previously published on LDSblogs.com.\u00a0 My grandmother was mentally ill. 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I'm Abby Christianson, a transplanted Mormon living the dream. In my life, I've lived in seven different US states and visited other countries. And the thing that amazes me is that in every place I've been the LDS (Mormon) church is the same. The people have hearts of gold, and their love for the Savior is unchanging. But for some reason, people still think Mormons are weird, backward, and sometimes even Amish. I'm here to try to help clear up the misconceptions about Mormons by showing you that we are just like you. We love our families, eat junk food, love movies, and spend time with friends. And just like you, our faith and values go deep. So join me as I keep trying to scatter sunshine everywhere I go. And hopefully, you'll find your faith in Christ strengthened along the way. Autism and more I'm also here to talk about Autism, and being an Autism Mom. There were few resources online when my son was diagnosed. So I want to be a support to those parents who are trying to figure out their child, and how best to support them. My wonderful son stretches me and helps me grow every day. I love being his mother and the things that make him unique. In 2020, every autism service stopped. So I got trained to be an RBT (Low-level autism therapist) with BehaviorUniversity.com. It has made homeschooling and doing at-home ABA easier as I understand my son better. They have some courses for parents to help them understand autism better, and I highly recommend them if you are searching. We have been home-schooling off and on for 6 years now. And it's wonderful to see my son thriving. Education and background Although my degree is not in education, I do have degrees from BYU Idaho and Southern Utah University in public relations, interpersonal communication, and marketing. I was lucky enough to get to teach a couple of freshman classes at SUU as part of my senior project. I have the best memories of those times. And it showed me how much I love to teach. While at SUU I was on the debate team. I wasn\u2019t great, but I loved the team and the feeling of unity we had. As a member of the Lambda Delta Signa sorority, I spent a year as VP of my chapter. I served on Institute Council and in leadership with my choir. And I was a member of the Lambda Pi Eta honor society. Funny enough, I was nominated as SUU\u2019s personality of the year in my senior year because I was so involved When my son was small I was part of the PTA at bus school \u00a0I even served on the PTA board and taught art classes to the kids. \u00a0I also volunteered to help out in the cafeteria. And I was a \u2018recess duty\u2019 meaning I got to be outside as a responsible adult during recess I love to write and wrote for LDSblogs.com as Abby Christianson and as Patty Sampson for many years. I took over editing LDS Blogs when our beloved editor Terri Bittner passed away suddenly from brain cancer in 2017. Then in 2020, LDSblogs.com stopped publishing after the pandemic affected their funding. But they are still online and some great stories are there if you are interested. I'm a lifelong member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I've been married for 23 years, and a mother for 15 years. I love people and creating in any capacity I can. I hope you'll join me as we navigate this crazy world we live in.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scatteringsunshine\/author\/achristianson\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scatteringsunshine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scatteringsunshine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scatteringsunshine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scatteringsunshine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3521"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scatteringsunshine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scatteringsunshine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scatteringsunshine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scatteringsunshine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scatteringsunshine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scatteringsunshine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}