I met a woman who now bears the pain of losing her own child. She married a man she loved a year ago. I bet these newly weds had no idea that they will be standing in their daughter’s funeral a year later. It’s the same season, and the same cold November wind, but for them, everything is different this year. The joy of marriage they experienced only a year ago feels so far away. Now it’s all about the loss and grieving, so fast, and so soon for this young couple in their mid-twenties. Losing the child is one of the hardest things to go through as a human being and I didn’t have to walk up the aisle of the chapel to meet the purple dead body of the 2 week old baby to imagine that pain. Her white coffin adorned with pink roses, and nice white blankets wrapping her small body looked all so mismatching. It looked wrong for the baby to be lying in the coffin while her mom was standing near her in tears.

They baptized her right before she died, and now she is lying under the Crucifixion. I stood in front of the small coffin looking down at the child. I thought, ‘She’s so lucky that she’s on the other side.‘ I envied her for leaving this world. My recent mild symptoms of depression were real.

My eyes were already swollen from crying. I cried so much for my own reasons the night before that I could not shed any more tears to relieve the sadness I was feeling along with others in the funeral. This is life, our human life, this is our reality separated from God, separated by our original sin. We are on our way back to the bosom of our god, and here lay one young soul already at the gate of heaven.

“Do you know?” 

“Know what little angel?”

“Do you know that you go to heaven when you die? That God is waiting for you in your true home?”

“Yes, baby girl, I know that already. I am so happy that you are where you beloing.”

I heard the inner conversation going on between me and Emily, the baby in heaven.

“Please let others know too.”

I felt her telling me that. And at that moment, I realized that we are all where we belong as long as we are in the arms of God; Me here in the world for now, and Emily back in heaven’s glory and joy. I will be united with God fully when the Lord wills, but until then, I need to let other know about what I know, and what little Emily now knows.