|
On Faith Sandra Sagisi |
Death fails to dim a
mother’s boundless loveEcclesiastics 3:1-8 tells us: "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven." My mother fulfilled her season on Earth when her time came to depart this world on the 23rd of January.
Her stroke changed her life in a split second and left her with only four days to live. So suddenly she went that I had very little time to say goodbye. Mother's Day this year will be painful, I'm sure.
The week before she died, my sweet mother called more than 30 of her relatives and friends, as if she knew she was living on borrowed time.
The continuation of life after death has occupied me since her passing.
I often wish that I could give her one more hug, tell her how much I truly love her one more time and spend just a few more hours with the woman who gave me life.
I never thought my grief would be something I could survive.
But through dreams, my mother has comforted me and given me that one last hug that I needed to go on with my life. In these dreams she is extremely happy and expresses how busy she is on "the other side."
She talks of a place of peace and serenity, of a "life after Earth-life."
Our conversations last just a few seconds, yet when I awake I feel as if I have been with her for hours. These dreams give me hope that life is eternal and that death is truly not the end.
I believe that we lived as intelligent spirits before we were born.
We lived with God and to God we will return. Life on Earth does not mark the beginning of our existence. Poet William Wordsworth best described it:
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting.
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.
I believe that Earth is a place for us to prepare to meet with God.
We come to Earth to get a body, to develop faith and to learn the consequences of good and evil.
When a person dies, his or her spirit goes on to the spirit world. Our body is just a shell, but at death our spirit lives on.
Our spirit takes with us the knowledge and appetites we acquired on Earth.
The most dramatic account of reaching out to the spirit world after death was during the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In Peter 1:4-6: "For this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit." So you see, birth was not the beginning, and I am strengthened to know that death, which we all must face someday, is also not the end.
If you are grieving the loss of a mother or a loved one, be comforted to know that there is life after life.
If not, then what is the purpose of life?
If you are fortunate to still have your mother around, shower her with love, kindness and kisses and make every day Mother's Day. Life is short.
Treasure every waking moment with her!
Sandra Sagisi is media director of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Hawaii Public Affairs Council. The daughter of the late Andrea Sagisi, of Kauai, she has an 11-year-old daughter.
Religion Calendar