Heaven

I'm not a religious person. I am Jewish by culture and family ties, but don't have any tenacity about there being an absolute truth when it comes to religion. As an educator in the public sector, and a minority, I'm a firm believer in the separation of church and state, and I'm definitely sensitive about religious language. When it comes to matters of the heart I know that people respond and react in well meaning and loving ways, and try to be sensitive in my own reactions and responses.

Last week, my nurse mom and I had an IM conversation about the different terms for death. She said in her profession, they say amongst the staff that a patient has "gone to heaven". This bothered me. What is heaven? And how can one define when another is 'going' there? How long does it take? Where is it? I am just too pragmatic and roll my eyes at that (gotta work on that part). There are too many beliefs in the world about death and the presence or lack thereof of an afterlife. People often talk about how to explain what happens AFTER death. But how do you tell someone that a loved one has died? Even the word 'died' is loaded. It's passive. Deceased. Demise. Depart. Perish. Succumb. And those are only the passive synonyms.
In truth, often it is a passive experience. Passive- passed away. Passed away doesn't carry any religious connotation like "gone to heaven", so I like it more. When I was very ill and in the hospital this year, during late night nurse shift change my nurse knelt by my bed, placed her hand in praying formation and said "G-d bless you." While well meaning, this really irked me. "May you be well," would have sufficed.

So here I am the night of my grandmother's death. The second grandmother I've lost in the last 6 months. And while I don't believe in heaven, I do believe that if one believes there is one, then it is an absolute truth for that person. I don't know if my grandma, if either if my grandmas, believed in heaven. But I know if they did, then they are both there, perhaps having a cup of tea, or more likely some delicious pastry my grandma Viola made, talking about the similarities and differences in their lives, and how they both ended up settling in the same suburban area. And how each of their lives were affected by their religion during World War II, and each had husbands that served in the military in America, and each had lovely children, one of each who would meet each other very early in their lives, and share their memories of their first granddaughter, ME, when they were still very young themselves. And how each of them would have three more grandchildren each (one more shared) and how fortunate they both were to live into their 90's.
I couldn't be with my grandma Florence today, but she was heavy in my heart while we ventured out of the city. The pictures were taken, unknowingly, around the same time my grandma took her last breath. Think what you will.