Reaching.

While perusing on MckMama's blog today, I discovered: This. 

I found myself using my break to read this family's story, and just trying to grasp how things like this happen.  Death itself is hard to understand, but the Death of a child.  Inconsolable.

How people find faith and hope in the midst of such sorrow and despair.  I find it so utterly amazing and inspiring.  Stories like this one have bothered me for some time.  These stories are so gut wrenching, so heart pulling, and so inspiring and so world changing.  Death, itself is so hard to grasp, so hard to understand; to fathom a world outside this one.  A Heaven of sorts.  Is there a Heaven? 

I am Catholic, I was raised Catholic.  I take the pumpkin to Church every Sunday, except when she is too sick.  I have always believed in Heaven.  I would like to think there is a Heaven, but what if there isn't?   Is that just soemething that was told to us to make us feel better about losing our loved ones?  To somehow help us through each day, to each next passing moment in the midst of terrible, barely hanging on, despair. 

To me, I have thought about this in the past.  And when you are a child, at least to me, sitting at my desk in school girl pigtails and curls, and bows, and knee socks, and school uniform, feet hanging somewhere above the floor, dangling, while they taught us abour Heaven and Earth; I imagined that Heaven was another Earth.  Far above the Earth, where everyone walked on clouds and everyone who had passed, wandered around happy, eating ice cream and sitting on benches and jumping on clouds, with puppies and kittens running around, and birds flying all over the place. 

Now, realistically, I know that, to me, Heaven is probably more like a psychological state of mind/being, and less of a physical place that exists in another space far above the planet.  At least to me, I think we just travel to a dreamlike state of consciousness (or unconsciousness, I wager, as we are deceased). 

So, I guess to me, how do you deal with that?  Maybe it's better to think that this physical place exists, and that your loved one is living there, at peace, skipping and jumping, playing Hop Scotch on the sidewalk, chasing bunnies and butterflies.  I mean, how do you deal with that otherwise. 

Good Lord, I pray for these mothers and fathers and families that they may know some kind or peace, some kind of faith and hope in something greater than ourselves to help them through these times of sorrow.  And, it makes me think of how blesses my husband and I are to have this life in front of us, to hold Nikolina and kiss her and hug her, and smoosh her, and tickle her, and hear her giggle, and snuggle her, and Love her, and watch her grow before our eyes, and see her smile, and laugh, and learn new things, and experience LIFE with her and through her eyes. 

And, it makes me think how I would ever get through an experience like that.  Would I?  Would I rise through the pain and the sorrow, and make the most of my existing life?  Would I turn a child's passing into something magnificent like a starting an orginization in that child's honor to celebrate their life and to work towards campaigns and fundraisers to educate people and make them aware and raise money for a cure?  Would I raise money in their honor to build playgrounds? 

Or would I wallow in my own pain and sorrow and the "what if's" and "why's."  Would I turn inside myself, inside my pain, as in the movie "What Dreams May Come" and head down that dark path toward despair and self pity?  To somewhere beyond help, beyond the reach of help.  I just don't know.  Would I gain faith, would I lose it? 

How else do you make it through something like that except through faith?  Through a belief that life exists beyond this place.  That your loved one is still "living" just on another plane, in anther space.  For, you have to believe they are living, if at least somewhere beyond your reach.  You have to believe they are safe, that their passing was not in vain.  That their life means something.  You have to make their life, their presence, however fleeting, mean something.  They have to "live" and grow in some way, or how would you deal with each birthday, each D-day, each day, each moment, each second.  How would you.

Or would each day just be a normal day, but a little sadder, a litte harder, a little grayer   Would each day carry on, except if you caught yourself thinking, caught yourself remembering, and then you have to either push it aside, or rise above it, and learn and grow, and be a better person for it.  I won't ever understand the reasoning behind these tragedies, and I don't ever think anyone could justify them for me no matter what the cause.  The death of a child is inconsolable to me. 

And, I pray, I pray for these failies, and I praise the Lord for our gifts, and I treasure them every day.  I treasure that in some way, I can treasure them a little more, becuase people share their stories, their tragedies, their loss.  And, I am thankful for their brutal honesty, inspired by their faith, and forever changed by their stories.