One final thought about grief (although myriad are the possible avenues of thoughts, surely).

In 2001 I asked a dying friend, “Are there herons in heaven?”

“Huh?” she said.

“What do you think?” I asked. A tired smile was all the answer I got.

Who knew; who knows? I didn’t. She didn’t. Whatever any of us might believe, religious and non-religious, once confronted with grief, people find themselves with questions like “What is next?” “Is there next?” “Heaven?” “God?” We who bank on Christian tradition, bank on heaven. But what do we know? 

“That I can’t answer the heron question is, I think, why I don’t have any interest having you there,” I said to my friend. So, I wrote her the following. A few months later, I delivered her eulogy.

“Herons are in our world,” I wrote. “I love this audacious light-boned, long-necked fisher. Who else would wake us with a growling shout, announcing his movement from this tree to that? I love that audacity is in the world. Is any there, in heaven?  I haven’t a clue.

“I dreamed of you last night. I dreamed and dreamed and dreamed. I had a childhood friend with me at your house. Her name was Judy. In truth, I haven’t heard of her or from her in over twenty years, but I had her at your house and I ignored her completely while you and I talked, and while you napped, I talked with others in your family. When you woke (in this dream), you and I stretched like life-long girlfriends across a bed, laughing and rejoicing in the beauty of your long hair somehow magically restored. You sipped on a glass of milk over ice that I prepared for you, but not before I mistakenly poured some of that milk into ice-water and started over. It was a very real dream! But, the noisy flight of Heron put a stop to the dream and put the question in my mind. Are there Herons in heaven?  

“Will I be awakened by the squawk of just such a bird – there? Are birds there at all? 5:20am. These are the questions that causes me to say, “No thanks, I don’t want my friend there. I want her here, where I am. I want her here, thank you; here, where Herons holler and children do, too. Here, where a dog’s affectionate lick is all the entertainment a night needs. Here, where I am. Here, where I know stuff, and people, and bird’s names, and street names, and some familiar corners of the world. Here is where I want the people I love.  Here is where I want my friend.

“Heaven is better. I’ve been taught that. Heaven is where many people I love live.  I believe that. Heaven is where, finally, we will understand and revel in the presence of God. Right. Heaven is as thoroughly a growth step as was our exit from amniotic fluid to the atmosphere of air. I know that. Only, I am tactile and visual and auditory and earth-fitted, and I haven’t touched any surfaces of heaven.  I haven’t seen its structures. I haven’t heard its music or laughter. Is laughter there?

“In heaven, will I grate lemon peel for shortbread and get all the joy I need for the day from the spray of fragrance? Will I see tiny, tiny spiders crawling through the blueberries spread in pans on my kitchen countertop; blueberries I coaxed from the branches of bushes owned by my friend?  Will there be drama comparable to that created by her grandchildren and mine? Will we drop in on one another, there?  Do spirits drop in? Does anyone wonder why I’m not yet interested in heaven?

Not that Heaven isn’t best. Not that it isn’t filled with people, even animals, I long to see. Not that being there won’t cause me to say, ‘Oh my goodness!  How could I not have longed for this!?’ Only, that will be then, and this is now.  And for now, I’m not interested in being there or having anyone I love change their address.

“It’s the ‘I don’t know-ness’ of it all that causes me to pray against heaven. It’s that, when we go, I want us to all go. You know, Together. And, of course, all our children and all the people we dearly love, and the animals we couldn’t make obedient here, or those that were. It’s a matter of love and touch and presence. It’s awareness and shared-ness. It is true that the reward of heaven hurts us. It causes painful separations and puts on those of us left, the burden of survival. It leaves us with huge holes in our hearts and questions like, “Are there Herons in heaven?”

“So, I pray selfishly for you, my friend. Not for you do I pray the joy of heaven. No. I pray for you the prolonged hardship of beating this disease. Hardship it is and will be; yet, that is what I want for you (for me). Because I love you, here, where herons holler.”

 And that is grief, is it not? That, at least, in my opinion, is a strong part of honest grief.