Heaven on Earth

Danny was buried on March 20, 2002. In the course of the memorial and graveside services held for him that day person after person offered us the oldest spiritual bromide in the comforter’s medicine cabinet, “He’s in a better place,” they said. I knew that each of them meant well; but the thought I had, but didn’t express, was, “No, he’s not.”

We were certain then, and we’re certain now, that the best place for a child to be is in their home with their family. Anyone suggesting something to the contrary has never buried a child. With all due respect, the people who offer this well-intended “comfort” often don’t realize what they’re saying. They should think a little more carefully before using a bromide on an ailment that’s the emotional equivalent of a massive, debilitating stroke.

Not long before Danny relapsed, the wife of the senior pastor at the church we were attending at the time made a critical observation about a grieving mother who was “falling apart” after her child died from leukemia. This upstanding Christian woman said, “If she really knew where her son was, she would be joyful.” This observation was made at the child’s memorial service. The dead child’s joyless mother had not been “dipped in the blood”, a fact that appeared to serve as the basis for the wife of the pastor to form her joyful judgment. That comment ranks near the top of the list of the most ignorant comments I've ever heard. It was insensitive and mean spirited. I don’t believe for a second that if this woman were burying her son that she would stand at the gravesite rejoicing in his death and departure to the “better place”.

After Danny died, another pastor’s wife told my wife that she was “almost envious” of my wife because my wife was able to be present when her child went into the presence of the glory of God. That comment wasn’t mean spirited; it was simply unbelievable.

Commenting on the “better place” theory, a friend of ours in Washington, DC who lost her beautiful five-year old daughter to a brain stem glioma said, “One part of Molly's truth was she didn't want to die. There was no peace for her in death. She was little and she was scared, and she didn't want to leave her family. There's no way I can change that fact. Even if there is a ‘better place,’ she didn't want to go there and she was adamant about it.”

Out of the mouths of babes. She didn’t want to go there. Danny didn’t want to go there, either. Molly and Danny would have rejoiced in staying right here in this place, because they regarded it as the better place, by far. These children were joyful in their room, in their home, in their family, in their neighborhood, in their school, in their interests, in the presence of their friends. They were joyful in their life. These kids, unlike most adults, knew intuitively that rejoicing is something done in the here and now, not in the there and after.

I’m sure the oft-cited “better place” is grand and glorious. But so is a living room filled with the singing of a carefree child; so is a dining room table splattered with the spaghetti sauce that also runs down a kid’s chin; so is a backyard where a little boy runs and laughs with his dog until they collapse in exhaustion; so is a little girl’s tea party with an assortment of imaginary friends; so is a school playground filled with a cacophony of youthful joy; so is a warm bedroom where a favorite blanket and an essential stuffed companion are pulled snug against a sleeping face; so is a swimming pool filled with a gang of 10-year olds at a birthday party; so is a zoo where a five-year old sees a certain animal for the first time; so is a couch in the den where a mom reads a story to a wide-eyed child who sees wonder in everything – so are an infinite number of other scenarios where children are seen growing up and enjoying life as it was meant to be enjoyed. Those are the joyful places that constitute the so-called heaven on earth.

You see, there’s the pain – the lost child was already in the better place; they were already in the embrace of a divine love; they were already in the presence of God. They just happened to also be in our presence, and that makes all the difference.

Obviously, no one wants to see a child suffer. So in that regard, any place where they aren’t suffering is a better place than where they were. But, frankly, that’s not what most people mean when they make their declarations about the “better place”, because they repeatedly invoke that phrase without regard to whether there has been any suffering.

Here’s the test, which can be put to any parent who has had a child die. Ask them, “If you could bring your child back here with you right now, would you?” “Yes!” would be the instantaneous answer, unless it meant returning that child to interminable suffering, which no parent would want to do. Absent that, any parent, including the pastors' wives, would reel their son or daughter in from the glory of God as fast as the reel would spin.

This test is applicable to a host of people, not just the parents of dead children. Ask the same question to someone who has lost a spouse, a sibling, a parent, or a close friend “before their time”. Again, if prolonged suffering is removed from the equation, these grieving people would regard a federal penitentiary as a better place than heaven for one simple reason – their loved one would be “here”, now. There’s no question in my mind about what any one of them would say about having their loved one back in their daily embrace. Forget the unseen “better place”.

There’s something we can all agree on whenever we’re talking about one of our loved ones, as opposed to when we’re talking about someone else’s loved one. We all agree that the “better place”, as joyful and glorious as it may be, can wait. If we just put the bromide back in the medicine cabinet and stop to think about it a little longer, then we realize that heaven on earth is the better place.

And all God's children said, "Amen."