Faith

Recently my Gran passed and as I waited for my turn to eulogize at her service I couldn’t help thinking about FAITH. The men and women who stepped to the podium ahead of me spoke what she brought to their lives, of her devotion to her faith and to others. Talked about her wonderful afterlife, a place where she would be able to walk unhindered… finally.

And despite this better place where she had be taken, how we who are left behind, would miss her terribly. But what did this all mean? What did my Gran feel, and what did these people feel this afterlife to be? They believed she wouldn’t need her leg brace or crutches there. They believed, as my Gran did, in a better place beyond the vale of life.

This wasn’t the first time someone in my life passed though that vale. Indeed some were older then my grandmother and some where very, very young. But then so was I. So young perhaps that I though myself immortal or simply felt it to far off to consider. I could leave the thoughts of where my family and friends had gone to others, content as I was to struggle with the pieces of life now missing. Never examining my faith, where I believed they had gone.

Yet after I spoke to those faces floating before me and we began to console each other, talking about her and the way just knowing her was enough to bring this crowd here to celebrate her passing. It occurred to me that despite the foxholes we were sitting in and the theists before me talking about her 21 grams floating above us with grandpa I felt hollow inside.

They were celebrating her life, just like me but they were also celebrating her death and this had the strangest effect on me. I was left wondering if I believed in an afterlife?! Well I was taught to, but if I hadn’t been would I have come to this idea myself? And indeed why would we deserve such an afterlife after the gift of living?

For looking around me there I couldn’t get around the idea that all this, the joy and sadness that my Gran gave us just by living, wasn’t that the greatest gift we could receive from our creator? And if that is true then shouldn’t my FAITH be in the living, letting the afterlife take care of itself just as it has since the beginning.

What does it matter that my Gran can dance after her life is over for from the looks of these people that surrounded me she did make mankind her business and for that she would surely be dancing in all our heart’s. Maybe even giving us all an example of where heaven truly is.