Heaven is Better

It’s been two months and five days since my mom passed into eternity. This is still a reality I am chewing on, as grief ebbs and flows and her nearness feels so recent some days and so agonizingly vacant on others. There is a sense of a long waiting in my present grief. It’s difficult to explain and honestly has less to do with my view on eternity and more to do with how my brain is processing her absence. People have shared “she will live in your memories” and I never understood this until now. When I feel the pain of her absence, I turn to my memories. I don’t really get further than that at this point. I find comfort in remembering the way she would bebop into our house to babysit, cold coffee in hand and arm bag over her shoulder. That’s always what comes to mind first - she was so lighthearted. The memory itself is painful - because I can never experience it again and it felt so ordinary at the time - but it does bring comfort. She truly lives in my memories. It feels like she is on a very long trip and while I miss her, I just don’t think I’ve gotten to the point yet of grappling with never seeing her again in this life. Maybe I won’t ever reach that place, maybe she will continue to live in my memories and, knowing I do believe I will reunite with her one day, perhaps my pain will always just be in a sense of waiting.

I had time to contend with her mortality while she was still with me. She slipped away slowly, like sand through my fingers. I’m still not really able to pinpoint the moment at which I lost her. It was one small unnoticeable thing after another until suddenly there was a different mother in front of me. That is a pain of its own kind, realizing you’ve lost someone when they’ve been right in front of you. The grief really laid heavy on me in 2023. I had cautiously been processing her condition as it came, slowly in tiny increments, until in spring of 2023 I stumbled upon two voicemails I had saved from her from 2020. One was a birthday message, and listening to it ignited the deepest point of my grief - right there on my family room floor. My soul felt like it had been ripped wide open and the guttural void was unbearable. I didn’t have words, only noises. The reality of who had I had already lost was suddenly so stark when I listened to her tell me happy birthday from another life while imagining her current disposition. I unraveled that day. Those moments of unraveling became more frequent throughout the year, and I am so grateful I unintentionally opened the floodgates that day because it meant that every moment I spent with her was with a completely present mind. From that point on I treasured every second. Every manicure. Every kiss on the forehead as I left. Every tucking of her blanket around her shoulders. I had already lost her mind to the disease, but I wasn’t going to miss losing her present body too.

In the last days this past December, my sadness mostly surrounded around what she would miss as my mom and grandmother. That she would never have chosen to leave before getting to know all of her grandchildren. That holidays and special memories would be foregone, and my children will grow up like I did – not ever knowing their grandmother past early childhood. I was sad for her more than I was sad for myself. But in God’s kindness, in the days following her death, my mind turned over what she could possibly be experiencing. I’m sure my imagination is a tiny fraction of the real thing, but I do know He promises that life after death is better. Whatever it is, it’s better. I’m still working out my exact theology, but I think I believe she is in a peaceful sleep. Fully restored. Fully cared for and loved by my Heavenly Father. Knowing that, my sadness for what she is missing on this broken earth is wasted. Even if I could speak to her now and she could have a choice between here and there - she would choose there. Why wouldn’t she? Why would she ever want to leave the perfect peace and joy of our Father? This world could never compare to her glory now. This revelation has brought so much healing to my grief journey - that while my deep ache for her presence is valid and deeply felt, knowing she is safe and she is better is the anchor that has steadied me in the wake of my pain. I am still tossed by the tidal waves that seemingly appear out of nowhere, but under the waves on the surface of the ocean, there is a deep calm in my spirit. She has given me a razor sharp lens to view the world through: the lens of eternity. I can’t wait to meet her there one day.