The White Door

Amelia told me yesterday that there is a big white door - she made a motion that showed it was a double door, with handles that open outward - and all of the people who have died are on the other side. "If you open the door," she said, "then you get dead too." When I was a little girl, I thought of Heaven like a stratospheric cloth stretched over the Earth, and on that cloth were chairs made of clouds where God and Jesus sat looking down on us, surrounded by angels. When she was three years old, Sophia told me, "when you die, God picks you up and carries you to Heaven" (an image that has stayed with me and made death so much less scary!)

It was easy for me, growing up, to believe in Heaven as a very concrete and real place. But I told a friend last week, the more people I love who have died, the more I NEED to believe in Heaven, and the more scared I am that perhaps there are no thrones of clouds and hosts of angels... there is so much more at stake now that I have people I love in Heaven - people I need to believe I will see again. I feel almost a desperate need to know things that I just cannot know. In a way Amelia is right, once you open the door, you will be dead too. I will just need to cling to faith, carry on bravely through the rest of my life, and know that when my time comes I will know, and I will be with my loved ones again.

My favorite funeral prayer is from the Book of Common Prayer:

O God of grace and glory, we remember before you this day our brother/sister. We thank you for giving him to us, his family and friends, to know and to love as companion on our earthly pilgrimage. In your boundless compassion, console us who mourn. Give us faith to see in death the gate of eternal life, so that in quiet confidence we may continue our course on earth, until, by your call, we are reunited with those who have gone before; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

On Wednesday, in Toulouse, France, my entire family will be at the funeral for my uncle and his family (who died in a plane crash last week). Because I have a newborn, I can't be there, and that has been really hard. I have sent this prayer, which will be part of the funeral service, and at 4 a.m. Central Standard Time and 11 a.m. Central European Time, I will be saying the same prayer as my family. Actually, I have found myself many many times over the past week, silently praying give me faith to see in death the gate of eternal life, so that in quiet confidence I may continue my course on earth, until, by your call, I am reunited with those who have gone before. In a couple of weeks will be the anniversary of our Violet's death - another opportunity to look toward Heaven.

I wrote a much more hopeful post on this same subject earlier in the year. I will get to that same place again. Until then, I am thankful for prayers that allow me to ask for help.