Ok so I was asked to help teach part of the lesson on Sunday (chapter 14) and I got the part about parents who lose children in death. So I figured I would use this medium to explore my thoughts on the topic (April if you read this, you're not allowed to cry)
There is the quote that "the only difference between the old and young dying is, one lives longer in heaven and eternal light and glory than the other, and is freed a little sooner from this miserable, wicked world." J. Smith also says, "They were too pure, too lovely, to live on earth; therefore, if rightly considered, instead of mourning we have reason to rejoice as they are delivered from evil..." This is the perspective that I have heard all my life. Because we have an eternal perspective, we can embrace, even welcome death. We celebrate it as we know that the angels that we loose too early in this life are simply returning to another, better world.
But I really appreciate the comment that comes after the first (above) quote... "Notwithstanding all this glory, we for a moment lose sight of it, and mourn the loss, but we do not mourn as those without hope." To me, this might be the most important line in here. We are presented with the reasons for which we should find peace and even joy in death, particularly as it relates to those who go to early or tragically. But it is as if he is justifying us when we mourn. After having been taught all my life that death was a good thing, it was quite a shock to find out how much it really hurts to lose like that. We are reminded of the eternal nature of our lives, the pain of this life, and the joy of "graduating" to the next. But what about those of us left behind.
To me, it's a bit like when April graduated from high school. Being just a grade younger than her (and feeling like we should've been twins or something) her graduation was a bit on the devastating side of things for me. Here we had gone year after year with me tailing her, always close enough to enjoy being around her (and annoy her!) and then next thing you know, she's in another world (the college world.) It's not like I ever begrudged her the experiences she was having or wished that she was back in high school with me. I mourned for my loss. I mourned because my life was a little bit harder with out her there. I knew where she was, I knew she was in a good place doing good things, I knew that I could talk to her even. But I was just sad that things were different and that my access to her and her influence in my life had been limited.
That is how death is. I know where we're going after this life. I believe in heaven. I believe life in heaven is so much better than life on this earth. Let's face it, this earth life has the potential to be very unpleasant. But when someone takes that final journey, whether young or old, my pain is not for them... it's for me. For the late night phone calls that dial into empty space; for the stories that are erased for the lack of ever being told; for my favorite recipe that no one knows how to recreate; for the picnic in a grassy field under a soft blue summer sky where we sit and talk until the dusk captured the horizon.. that we never take. The what ifs. The what nows. The why's and the ow's.
So yes I have hope in a brighter and more complete future. I have peace in knowing my loved ones lost are not far from me and I even believe it when people say the viel is thinner than we know and our loved ones are closer than we can understand. But until they pick up the phone when I call... no matter how much time passes, in the bottom recesses of my heart, it will still ache.
