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Heaven Is Within Us: Wrestling With Doubt on the Death of a Loved One

Heaven Is Within Us: Wrestling With Doubt on the Death of a Loved One

Last updated on: July 13, 2023 at 11:07 am by Lindsey Paris-Lopez

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Heaven Is Within Us: Wrestling With Doubt on the Death of a Loved One 2023-07-13T11:07:44-05:00 Lindsey Paris-Lopez

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Wrestling With Doubt

My grandmother died on Valentine’s Day.

At the time, I tried to write her a tribute but kept getting stuck. Memories tumbled over each other, refusing to condense themselves into words. I couldn’t articulate a lifetime of warmth and joy juxtaposed against the harsh reality of her absence. Words couldn’t do her justice, and I erased my feeble attempts.

Rather than struggle to express my aching heart, I wanted only to sit in my memories and let her spirit wash over me. Let the tears fall. Let myself miss her without having to say anything, wishing I could see, hear, hug her once more.

Months later, the perfect words still elude me. The keyboard still blurs with blinked-back tears. Trying to articulate what she means to me still chokes me up, and not just because I miss her terribly. Writing this tribute forces me to confront a deep-seated fear I’d rather bury. Yet only by facing this fear can I become the living testimony to her memory I aspire to be.

The trouble is, whenever I try to write about my grandmother, I want to end on a joyful note. I want to rejoice in confidence that she’s in Heaven and one day we’ll be reunited. But a nagging doubt plagues my thoughts:

What if I never see her again?

My faith in Love is not a certainty in life after death. I hope, yearn, and pray for universal restoration and reconciliation beyond this life. But, ultimately, I don’t know what that will look like.

I don’t know if Heaven as a realm of life after death exists as I imagine it. I can’t know that my grandmother is “in Heaven” as I picture her to be.

I can only know that Heaven was in her.

She Carried The Kingdom

“The kingdom of God is within you.” We all have the capacity to live into our truest selves as image-bearers of Love. Heaven isn’t a place but a way of living into Love’s call. When we live according to the authority of Love, we carry the Kingdom of God within us. We bring it to and find it in each other.

My grandmother embodied Love better than anyone I knew. She carried the Kingdom wherever she went.

Even as a child, I looked up to her not only as my grandmother, but as an exemplary person. I marveled at how everyone seemed to know her. She simply drew people to her with her kindness: befriending and helping generously and genuinely.

As I grew, her service in her church and community helped shape my values. She organized weekly peace forums, advocated for affordable housing, promoted interfaith dialogue, and worked to make the church and the world more welcoming and affirming for the LGBTQIA community. My grandmother modeled servant leadership simply by asking what Love would have her do in the moment and then doing it. Her altruistic spirit deeply inspired me.

But I knew her best as “Grammy.” Unconditional love personified. I remember the song-like quality of her greeting whenever she entered the house. I remember how happy I always was to see her, even though it was nearly as frequently as I saw my parents. Fragments of conversations I wish I could remember swim through my head, but I remember that she always listened. When I felt like no one else in the world could understand me, she made me feel heard and loved.

She was my best friend, my comfort in sorrow or anxiety.

She carried Heaven within, and it shone through her in all that she did.

The Faith She Gave Me

My grandmother helped shape the faith that sustains me. It’s not a faith in supernatural miracles, but rather a faith in human kindness. I believe that looking to the divine spark, the light of Love, in every human being is what makes our own love-lights shine. Grammy modeled that by joyfully loving others, by joyfully loving me.

And even when I feel skeptical or cynical or afraid, which happens frequently, I have a role model of perseverance in my grandmother. She went through trials and heartbreaks I didn’t usually see. But she kept giving, serving, loving, even as she sometimes stumbled or failed or felt the world’s harshness. Her resilient faith in Love kept the spark of the Spirit shining. She took rest and self care but remained unselfish, never losing sight of her interconnection with humanity and creation.

So the faith I embrace, the faith my grandmother helped inspire, is a faith in how to live and love in this world. It’s a faith that kindness, conscientiousness, and compassion will ripple through the world in ways I can’t always see. It’s the courage and stamina (still developing within me — it has yet to reach Grammy’s level!) to love and serve even through doubt, fear, and pain.

The faith my grandmother helped cultivate in me is not certainty. It’s a trust in Love to make a difference in spite of uncertainty. Her life gave me a template for living as an instrument of Love’s peace.

And that’s the faith I must turn to now, as her memory and example outlast her physical presence.

Longing For Certainty

But sometimes it just hurts. Grammy is the closest person that I’ve ever lost. And while I know that I’m lucky, indescribably lucky, to have had such a close relationship with my grandmother for over forty years, I was nowhere near ready to say goodbye. She was never old to me… until she was. I lived far away when her body aged rapidly. While other members of my family cared for her as her strength and memory withered, her death came suddenly to me. I wasn’t ready.

And I long for a certainty that has always eluded me. I want to know that I’ll embrace her again. But I don’t.

I’m certain of the love she carried and left in her wake. I know her impact will last and spread. She touched lives that will touch more lives still. Her love passes on — through us who knew her — to our loved ones. The springs of love are endless. They didn’t begin or end with Grammy, but flowed through her. As a channel of Love to the world, she is part of the Infinite.

But I can’t be certain I’ll see her again. I can’t be sure that she is still who I knew, or that I will be me, when this life ends. I can hope and pray and interpret scripture in ways that help me imagine a joyful reunion. But the realm beyond death is a mystery I can’t penetrate.

To everyone struggling with the loss of a loved one, aching in the uncertainty, I’m with you. Holding on to hope is good, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like enough. Fears and tears still come. Sometimes solidarity with others in doubt and grief is the only comfort we can give and receive.

Living In Hope

But when I remember my grandmother, the hope of seeing her again, ever-lingering, yields to a deeper hope.

Even more than seeing her, I long to reflect her spirit to the world.

That’s a hope I can live into. That’s a hope that stirs me to action rather than tethering me to the paralysis of longing for something I can’t know or control. That’s a hope that keeps Grammy’s spirit alive in me, and a hope in how I might live on through the loved ones who survive me.

I aspire to live into Grammy’s memory by following her example. Beyond our shared values, beyond the life of service I aspire to emulate, I want to radiate her warmth to my loved ones. If I can be the comfort and joyful presence to someone that she was to me, I’ll help keep her spirit moving in this world.

Heaven is Within Us

Heaven is within you and me just as it was within my grandmother and all the loved ones who have gone before. And we have the opportunity to pour heaven into the world when we live in love, friendship, solidarity and service. Whatever happens when we die, we can shape Heaven in this world from the inside out while we live.

Grammy lived into her vocation as a unique and beautiful reflection of Love. And when I share my love with the world, I reflect Grammy and all who have loved me into who I am and who I am becoming.

And when I remember her and live into the inspiration that she gave me, I can see glimpses of her reflection everywhere. Because love mirrors love.

I still hope and pray to see Grammy and all who have gone before when I die. But I can shine her love through me to the world, and see the light of your loved ones shining through you.

Image: Available on Wallpaper Flare via Creative Commons license.

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