As Bright as Heaven Part 2

 Spoiler alert!!  The mom in the book dies from the Spanish influenza.

There's a chapter, told from her POV, as she is dying.  I think it is SO beautiful.  This is found on pages 182-183. 

She says:

I had no idea the gap between earth and heaven is narrow, no wider than a jump over a brook.  I'd always thought heaven was so far from the living, no one could measure its distance from the earth.  Even the wisest person ever born couldn't look up at the night sky through the most powerful telescope and catch a glimpse of heaven--it was that far off.

That was the only part of knowing there is a heaven that used to frighten me-how far away it was.  And when Henry (her young son) died, that was what pained me the most.  ...

All this time my companion (Death) has been trying to show me that the space between the two worlds is not so vast.  Heaven is just on the other side of waking.

Death is not our foe.  There is no foe.  There is only the stunningly fragile human body, a holy creation capable of loving with such astonishing strength but which is weak to the curses of a fallen world.  It is the frailty of flesh and blood that causes us to succumb to forces greater than ourselves.  We are like butterflies, delicate and wonderful, here on earth for only a brilliant moment and then away we fly.  Death is appointed merely to close the door to our suffering and open wide the gate to Paradise.  If we were made of stone or iron, we would be impervious to disease and injury and disaster, but then we could not give love and receive love, could w?  We'd be unable to feel anything at all, and surely incapable of spreading our wings and flying...

 Henry is near to me now.  I can feel the canopy lifting, and I am not afraid.  If I were orchestrating the events, I would have us all be together at this moment I join my baby boy. But I shall fly ahead of Thomas and the girls, just as Henry did, and I know with all my heart that we shall be together again.  Perhaps on that fine day it will even seem that we've drifted heavenward only moments apart from one another, not years or decades...

...you all have the love that I leave here for each one of you.  It is spilling out of me even at this moment and finding its way to you all. 

Isn't this so beautiful?  Death isn't the enemy.  And we ARE near to those who have gone on before us and we WILL see them again.  I love that these aren't just nice words in a book but actual truth, beautifully expressed.  I know they are true and they are true because of Christ.