waking on the other side

About a month and a half ago, my family lost a great aunt who was very dear to me. She was 95, and had lived a full, beautiful life of love, family, and faith.

Aunt Ruth was a convert to the Catholic faith - she received her first communion at her wedding Mass. I remember the story she told about the first time she ever set foot in a Catholic church - it was at the beginning of a date with my great uncle Robert. He stopped at the church (I believe it was Immaculate Conception, the church in which they were later married), and told her he needed to go in and light a candle for his mother, who had died several years before. She went in with him, sat in the back pew and waited for him, and it was there, she said, that for the first time in her life, she felt the presence of God.

She was a beautiful person, and I was blessed to have had her in my life. I can only hope that I can be a better person because of her example.

The morning after I learned of her passing from this life, I was in the car, on my way to work. The early morning darkness was just beginning to lighten as night was giving way to day, and the sky over the Sandias was a brilliant, dark cobalt blue.

The first thought that crossed my mind as I looked at that ethereal blue, framing the mountain crest, was, "Oh God, she will never see that sky again."

That was immediately countered by, "But, I wonder what it must be like to wake up in eternity?"

And my God, isn't that the more important thing? To wake up in a joyful eternity? For the comparatively dark night of our human life and death to pass seamlessly into the dawning everlasting light - just like that early morning's darkness was met by the kiss of day's first light?

It's beyond the reach of science, beyond the depth of human wisdom - it's further than we can reach alone.

Eternal rest grant unto her, Oh Lord; let perpetual light shine upon her. May she rest in peace.


+peace, and all good.