There are no easy shortcuts when it comes to helping your children learn what it means to love people who will die, and to live with that knowledge. Suddenly I knew we’d made the right decision to bring the kids with us. My younger daughter reached out, hesitantly, and touched my father’s gray beard. ![]() I took her hand, then put my arm around her and drew her close as we both crumpled. Tears were drifting down her cheeks as she said a sweet goodbye to her grandfather. For the first time in days, our older daughter no longer looked moody, or one breath away from throwing up. Then my husband brought our children up to say goodbye. As I stood in my parents’ church a few feet away from my father’s body, listening to the parishioners around me chant antiphons I didn’t know, perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised to feel the old belief stir, bearing me up like a strong current, as undeniable as it was unseen.Īfter the service, my mother and I went up one last time to see Dad. But the faith you’re raised in can still move fathoms below the surface, even when your relationship to it has altered beyond recognition. ![]() In the past decade or more, I’ve questioned beliefs I once held dear, discarded plenty of others. “This is our hope in the Resurrection.” It would have annoyed me coming from anyone else, but her loss was so much greater than mine. My mother, who was mostly cried out by then, put her arm around my shoulders. In his casket-one a family friend had made and then refused to take a dime of my mother’s money for-he did look peaceful. ![]() I wondered how many other people in the massive crowds around us were also mourning someone or something here, at The Happiest Place on Earth.
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