Moving On To Different Pastures

Okay, so life on earth is one big pasture. When I die, I go from my pasture on earth to my pasture in heaven. This is what Christians believe; there is a place called heaven where I will no longer be troubled with earthly problems.

This morning I attended a funeral for a lady named Kay.  I did not know her but she had belonged to my Young At Heart group at Spirit of Christ. There were about one hundred persons at mass.  Some had come for daily mass, but the majority had come to pay homage to their friend, Kay. For the past three years, she had been in a nursing care facility and from what I had heard, "she was not doing well." Now she was gone.

Along with the usual rituals for a mass for the dead, the priest spoke on dying. He mentioned that he had seen the play of Les Miserables and described the dying scene. I don't have his exact words but this was the gist of what he said.  "The stage is darkened, all goes black.  A bright light appears and from the light walk the dying man's friends and loved ones.  He is happy to see them and gets up from his death bed and walks into the light with his friends and the stage goes dark again."

"This is how death must be," the priest said,  "when one dies, one leaves all the suffering of earth and goes to meet  loved ones that  are already gone. Those that have gone ahead, wait patiently to take their loved one into their arms"  What a beautiful way of putting death as a happy occasion and not as a fearful step that we must all take. I, for one, would love to see my parents, my brother and the many friends that have gone before me. What a joyful reunion it will be because I have so much to tell them!

I was told that Kay's husband had died a few years ago but at every gathering she always spoke of him. She kept his ashes and now their ashes will be buried together. For someone who had no family, she would have been happy to see her many friends gathered around and telling stories about her. One of her friends gave a short eulogy about Kay.

On a table, there were some carved elephants.  I asked about them and was told she collected them. From what I was told, she collected many things. There were angels on the table and she would give angels to her friends. She was a member of a social group called the Baker's Dozen and they circled her photographs as they all said good-bye; each with her own memory of Kay. In one of the pictures she is wearing a red hat and I was told she belonged to the Red Hat Society. 

"When you were born,
you cried and the world
rejoiced.  Live your life
in a manner so that when
you die, the world cries
and you rejoice."
                                                                                                                                   Native American Proverb.