by Noelle Link
When I was 15 years old, my grandmother took a turn for the worse. She was hospitalized and was not expected to live much longer. A few days after she was admitted to the hospital, the doctors said she was recovering and would be able to come home in a few short days. The following day I was eating lunch at school on the lawn with friends. I noticed a woman walking toward me with a younger girl, and as soon as I looked up, I knew what had happened. It was my mother and my younger sister. They had come to take me out of school, because my grandmother had died. I still remember that day, like it was yesterday.
My grandmother was Catholic, as were my mother and my sister and I. She was the first close person to me that had died. It was a terrible feeling; there was so much mourning. I didn’t go to school for weeks. We had an open casket viewing and funeral for her. It was a very difficult time to go through at such a young age. Death was awful, since we were not really taught what would happen after death. There was the hope that the “soul” would go to heaven, and that it looked down on us every day. I was told to imagine God up in His kingdom in the clouds of heaven with anyone that had died, all of them skipping around and enjoying “life”.
But of course, there was always the fear that her soul had not reached heaven, but ended up first in purgatory or worse. It sure sounded strange to me at the time, but I knew not to question those teachings. Death was something I was terrified of. It was the way I’d been brought up.
A few weeks ago my husband’s Oma died. As most of you know, she had a very weak heart and was deteriorating fast. I now have a different outlook on death since learning the Truth. I find much more comfort now. It makes much more sense now to me, and I can prove it in Scripture. I’m so grateful to have the true knowledge of God’s teachings, about death and a lot of other misconceptions.
It was sad when Oma died, and I had wished we could all have seen her one more time, and that she could have seen her great grandchildren one more time. But, she is at peace now and I know we will all see her again, when she wakes up, healed. And I know that for her, virtually no time will have lapsed since she died.
