Cleo

Grandma Cleo (Brandon's sweet 98 year-old grandmother) passed away a few weeks ago in his parents' home in South Carolina.  Brandon was there.  In fact, at the very moment of her passing, he was in the next room, offering a blessing on the family meal, and pleading with the Lord to allow her to rest, if it was to be her time to go.  It was her time.  And she passed peacefully, with her family gathered around her.

A few months previously, Brandon and his two brothers had planned a boys' weekend.  They were all to fly in and play in a volleyball tournament, golf, and spend time together with their family (Dad, Mom, sister, plus extended family) back home.  Cleo, being cared for full-time by Brandon's parents in their home, had been fading fast.  Nobody expected her to make it until that upcoming boys' weekend.  But her dear son asked her to wait, and she held on.  She had stopped eating and drinking, but still she held on.

She had been unresponsive for a few days, but when Brandon (first to arrive) stood by her side, she woke up and spoke to him.  She asked how he was, and how the kids and I were doing.  She was lucid, and happy to see him.  She told him that she had been to Heaven and back.  She lingered here in mortality, so that she could be with her entire family one last time.  The other grandsons flew in, the family spent a wonderful weekend with her, and then she passed away.

I hopped on a flight the next day, to go be with the family and attend the funeral.  It was amazing.  We gathered in a beautiful old church downtown...the Methodist church Cleo had attended most of her life.  As I looked around at her friends and family, I pondered the influence of one person upon so many others.  I looked into the faces of Cleo's old friends, her sons, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren.  So many people there together, because of her.  So many people brought into existence through her.  So many people built on her goodness and character...the principles she taught and lived playing an important role in the forming of who they had become.  Her great legacy will live on through generations to come.

Funerals seem to be made for pondering and reflection.  Seeing her cold, lifeless little body tucked into the billowy white satin lining of that elegant coffin.  Touching her cold, manicured hands.  Noticing a stillness of body that seemed unreal and foreign.  Knowing that she wasn't occupying that space in existence any longer.  That she was in a different place.  And wondering.  About the great beyond.  About where she really was then, what she was doing in that earthly moment, as I gazed at her former now-empty mortal residence.

When set to pondering such weighty and eternal matters, the tendency to question arises.  To question the meaning of mortality and eternity.  To question what one really believes to be true about life and death.

Questions came to me in my pondering, that day in the beautiful old chapel.  And answers came as well.  I felt the soft stirrings in my soul, sent from a higher realm.  The Heavenly feelings of peace and assurance, given by a merciful God who loves his children through this mortal experience.  A God who has answers and will give them when we ask.  And who answers quietly, privately, speaking softly to our innermost souls.

Life is miraculous.  Death is equally so.  The bringing of life into this world, and the taking of life from it, is the work of God.  I know it as I know my own hands.  I have felt it so powerfully, that I can't deny it.            

18  I will not leave you comfortless:  I will come to you.

19  Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more;  but ye see me;  because I live, ye shall live also.

25  These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you.

26  But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

27  Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you;  not as the world giveth, give I unto you.  Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

--John 14

July 2010