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A few more thoughts to mull on tonight.

What is your thoughts about Heaven?

Do you think of it as a place ?

Who will be there?

As some of us are relatively young so death to many may seem remote even if we have had experience with relatives or even friends passing on. Maybe you have had a near death experience if so what happened and what mark if any has it left on you?

A thought also to take away from this weekend's thread is that however young we are death can suddenly come so we should always let our friends and family know what we think of them and appreciate the things they have done for us.

This is summed up in a song that DaveLoneRanger sent me the link for by Garth Brooks, "If Tomorrow Never Comes." audio version.

video clip

Ever since I was a little kid for some reason I always knew death was for everyone no matter what their age. Gosh only knows what put that in me but that is how I have always felt. Perhaps because I would go with my mother to the cemetery to water flowers and I would see all sorts of dates on the headstones. For example the cemetery had a Baby Land. If that does not teach death is no respecter of age I do not know what would.

I remember the day when I was a child that death hit home. My gramma (dad's side in Queens NY) was dying. It took her TWO years and for those 2 years, we regularly visited her bedside (cancer) and heard her cry and moan from the pain and beg us to shoot her! I was only about six when this vigil began for heaven's sake. When she finally passed, I distinctly remember being loaded into the family station wagon to go to the funeral and the wake. I was so terrified. I prayed in that car that we'd miss it. We got a flat and we missed the wake. I was SO glad. I didn't want to see a dead body. Going to the funeral at the last and to the graveside to throw dirt on her coffin was incredibly difficult emotionally.

After that, we'd had one of our cats die (which before didn't really provoke a lot of thought ... they went to heaven) but this time, my sister and I spent hours with the dead body of this cat, petting her, talking to her, asking her to appear as a ghost cat if she could (LOL what boobs) ... and nothing happened. My sister and I went to our local Catholic church during the week when it was quiet and drank the Holy Water thinking this would tell Jesus how much we loved Him and He would appear to us (gee we were goofy).

Since then, I've kept my strong feelings of God and how much He loves us but He just doesn't interfere. He doesn't treat us as puppets on His stage and the world is one of chaos. What happens to us happens to us and He'll give us the strength to get thru it, but He's not going to direct the show. I do believe that people recover from cancer or other, but I don't believe it's because they were so special to Him or prayed extra good or anything. Just more chaos. Just IMHO.