Reflections on Losing a Grandmother

I wrote this about a month ago. Tonight I am sad. I miss my Grandmother so much. I really would like her back. I wrote this piece as a personal reflection but am posting it to honor her. This an email she wrote to me a while back: 

Your blog is wonderful.  When I read it I took a copy to Granddaddy to read.  I said, "I wish I were educated enough to write something like this.  You are a good writer.  I hope you will remember me with all your blogs.  I hope you had a wonderful Christmas.  I'm sure your total attention is on studying at the moment.  I think of you every day and tell everyone I meet how great you are in all ways.  I love you girl.
Grams

This goes out to you Grams, I miss you every day. 

Grams holding me when I was born

I was a little older here

I don’t remember the first time I learned about death, it has always been a reality to me. I never knew my Mom’s Dad, Neilson Beard, or Grandaddy Neilson as I have always thought of him.  I remember my Mom explaining to me when I was a child that death was the culprit that deprived me of the pleasure of knowing him. 

I have lost others that I knew; great grandparents, acquaintances, etc. I felt death’s sting, but only for a bit. I have seen others weep and mourn over lost ones from afar causing sympathy to well up within, but only for a moment. I’ve seen death from afar and shivered. I have never liked death and always feared the day when someone I was very close to would take his or her final breath. I couldn’t really think about it because even the distant thought was too painful for me.  I have seen a lot of hard things, witnessed many travesties but never has death robbed me of someone I cherished and loved deeply, never have I tasted its bitterness until Sunday, February 17^th , 2013. This was the day I had to face this notorious thief head on. He came up and sat right beside me, and the pain of its presence broke my heart.

In the past week I have cried more tears than I have in the past 10 years combined. I have felt an intense anger and moments of severe depression. I made a conscious decision to let every emotion come, to feel it until it left and to talk about what I was feeling with those around me.  By the miracle of my faith, I personally believe Grams is in a better place. By the miracle of her faith, she is in a better place…. to be honest this truth gives me peace but it does not take away the reality of her loss. It does not solve the problem that her presence is forever gone on this earth. It does not make me miss her any less. I will never get another email from her, she will never post on my facebook wall again, I will never celebrate Christmas or Thanksgiving with her, her warm embrace is forever gone and her humor, laugh and smile will never enrich my presence. She is gone, and for whatever number of days I have left here on earth, this void will be felt. And eternal life doesn’t solve this problem.

I have been robbed of someone who held me in my very first moments of life, I have been robbed of a loving grandmother whose presence I have always known. I am intensely thankful for every memory I have of her and with her. I know she loved and cherished me as her granddaughter. I know she knew I loved and cherished her as my grandmother, but I want her back. This is just the plain and simple truth. I wasn’t ready to loose her, and I never would have been.

All of these raw emotions have led me to think about death. The bible isn’t completely clear about if physical death existed before the fall of man. We know the death of plants occurred because they were given as food but as far as human life, we are not sure. God told Adam he would die if he ate the fruit but he didn’t immediately physically die, his death was a spiritual one. Thankfully, as we see in Romans, the problem of spiritual death has been solved through Jesus, “so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 5:21).  People have written long and detailed reasoning about if there was or wasn’t physical death before the fall but I do know that the pain caused by physical death likely did not exist before the fall and I also think of what God had to say to Adam after this event “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return. (Genesis 3:19), it seems as if returning to dust was one of the mentioned “punishments.”  Through fact and reasoning I have come to the humble and possibly incorrect conclusions that either a. physical death of humans did not exist or b. because of the perfect union with God that existed, physical death did not cause pain.

Out of these contemplations, I have come to a deeper understanding of grace, salvation and the human body through the death of Grams. Ever since I believed in Jesus I feel like it has been a journey of understanding the value of grace. I thought that I got grace when I believed but really through the years, I just come to value and understand it more and more. As if grace is this gift that just keeps giving through a deepened revelation of understanding and thankfulness.

As I saw the body of my lifeless grandmother in her casket, I understood in a new way the value of our soul. Without her soul, what lay there, without any movement was just a “tent”. It was her earthy home that she left to dwell in her “building from God” eternal in the heavens (2 Corninthians 5:1). Our bodies are but vessels that carry our soul, until our soul returns to be with Jesus permanently. Our bodies are temples that house the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19) until the day we die where this vessel is left behind to return to dust. However, because of what Jesus did on the cross, death is not the final answer. So as her body will return to dust, her soul is alive with God, completely satisfied. The amazing power displayed on the cross prevented death from separating us from the love of Christ. What love and power that is. What a miracle faith is that my heart believes this against any biological or practical reasoning. We witness two miracles here. I rejoice in these truths.

As we are left here, how do we experience the same love and power demonstrated through the salvation of my grandmother? For one, amidst the fact of eternal life it is okay to mourn and weep. When Mary lost her brother, Lazarus, Jesus saw her weeping and he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. Jesus also wept himself in response to a death. A sinless man wept. There is no sin in weeping here. He knew fully the power He had over death and he still wept. (John 11:33-35). Death of those we love is a sad, tear producing thing that we can fully experience under the love of Christ, knowing it is in his very character to be deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled over our sadness. So in this sadness and mourning I look to Jesus for his comfort because I know his love is powerful, he said it himself as recorded in Matthew 5:4, blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. So in this state I am sad and blessed and under the rule of a loving creator who overcame death so that he could be with this creation forever. I will walk through the loss of my beloved grandmother and feel the pain of her absence but be thankful for her sweet spirit I got to love and with confidence I say that when my perishable body puts on the imperishable and my mortal self puts on immortality I will be able to stare at death as it comes to free me of my earthly body and say “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor 15:54-55). Until then, we walk by faith and in our pain and grief we know more deeply the love and grace of our creator who cared enough to not let the sins of Adam and Eve separate us forever. In pain and grief we remain thankful servants to our benevolent creator.