I am finding this first anniversary of my dear sister’s sudden death to be more one of opening myself to healing and reflection than one of reliving the depths of grief and sorrow; for this I feel very blessed. Over the past year, I have learned a great deal and hopefully grown through the reflections and prayer evoked by Heidi’s accident and death. Perhaps through my faith that “everything is in its place,” I have not dwelled in the negative. Although I experience much sorrow and grief, I know in my heart that at the young age of thirty-two, she had finished her work in this world and was ready to move on to the next.
Since Heidi died, I have reflected much on the sorrows and joys, the anxiety, burdens and grief, and the love and dignity of life… and can see that all are gifts of life. Without trials, losses and pain, we would be mesmerized and captured by the material level of life – never searching for, never discovering the other levels of truth. We are designed and created to experience the levels of greater truth: The levels of potential and of spirit. Potential is more real than anything material; one needs only to “look” deeply into a child to know this. The truth of the spirit is that the deeper virtues of faith, hope and love are even more real than potential. If life were without loss, sorrow and death, would we ever realize we must “look up” from our existence to see the beauty of potential and love that the Creator has provided? When we “look up,” we open ourselves – make ourselves as vessels – to receive the images of what could be and the grace of virtues.
Mother Teresa always said she was a “little pencil in the hand of God.” She knew how to “look up.” She understood that if she worked to awaken human dignity, the Creator would do the rest. Heidi’s death was, and is, a source of grief and sorrow – and yet, it has caused me to “look up” and to see that existence is the least real of the worlds available to us. I am coming to see (and sometimes live in) the worlds of potential and grace opened to me through reflection and prayer evoked by her passing. I am coming to see that in whatever life gives us, if we work to see what could be and lift up human dignity in the process, we too can become “little pencils in the hand of God” – and when we do so with faith and love in our hearts, the grace of our Creator will come through in ways we could never ourselves imagine.
Living hope comes when love enters receptive vessels
for the purpose of seeing what could be
for the future life of the whole.
