Thoughts on Life and Death

I have been thinking about Dad lately.  I was vividly reminded of his passing when I took Kent to the emergency room last week.  It was the first time I had been back to the hospital, and I found myself nearly sobbing.  Not so reassuring to my ailing husband.  Kent was very understanding and I was more than grateful that Kent's condition was easily treatable.

Two days ago I went to the hospital again to sit with Lyla so Christopher and Tysen could celebrate Steve Cox's birthday.  Lyla has fluid in her lungs, again, and is fairly miserable.  She was not happy with me.  I snuggled her, sang, and talked to her reassuringly, but of the 45 minutes I was alone with her, she cried 43.  I cried too.  I am sad she feels terrible.  We are worried about her health and we are worried about her parents and family.  I wish there was more we could do.

My mom is having some health problems as well, and all these things combine to make me think about the tenuous hold we have on this life.  We are not going to be here forever, but our lives, whether long or cut short, are important and meaningful.  I have read several things recently that have touched me and given me comfort.  For book group this week I read The Chosen by Chaim Potok.  There is a wonderful passage in the book I loved.

Human beings do not live forever, Reuven.  We live less than the time it take to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity.  So it may be asked what value is there to a human life.  There is so much pain in the world.  What does it mean to have to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye?  . . . I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing.  But the eye that blinks, that is something.  A span of life is nothing.  But the man who lives that span, he is something.  He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant.  

 And then, this morning, I was reading in the teachings of George Albert Smith, the eighth president of the Church.  Because I am in Primary, I never get to hear the lessons from Relief Society and Priesthood, so I try to read those on my own.  I was reading the chapter titled The Immortality of the Soul, and found the whole chapter very comforting and reassuring.  Encouraging too.  President Grant said,

When we realize that death is only one of the steps that the children of God shall take throughout eternity, and that it is according to his plan, it robs death of its sting and brings us face to face with the reality of eternal life.  Many families have been called upon to say good-bye temporarily to those they love.  When such passings occur, they disturb us, if we will let them, and thus bring great sorrow into our lives.  But if our spiritual eyes could be opened and we could see, we would be comforted, I am sure, with what our vision would behold.  The Lord has not left us without hope.  On the contrary he has given us every assurance of eternal happiness, if we will accept his advice and counsel while here in mortality.  This is not an idle dream.  These are facts.

I am grateful for my life experience.  I am sharing it with wonderful people I love and to whom I am bound for eternity.  I know our Heavenly Father loves us and rejoices when we chose to follow Him and mourns when we don't.  I am striving to give my life meaning and to realize that all the good I accomplish here, all I learn and experience, will be for my gain.  I want to more fully enjoy the fullness and richness of my life, embracing those around me both literally and figuratively so that our eternal associations will be even richer.