What About Heaven?

The house is perfectly still. Just the tap of the keyboard and the hum of the refrigerator. I want to sleep but Madeleine is burrowed so close to me that I must flee my bed in search of more blanket and more than one half of a pillow.

Tonight before bed and in between cartwheels, Madeleine wanted to talk about heaven. She’s been floating in a sea of myths for months now – first Greek, than Norse. Now she is reading a book about the saints, which in her mind falls into the same category. “I’m just worried,” she says, her twirly jean skirt billowing as she tries to do a cartwheel from her right side first, then the left, “Because what if heaven is just one of the myths? What if it’s not really real?”

I let the question hang in the air. I know from experience that Sunday School answers won’t satisfy this dear girl with a mind as wild as her unruly hair and unstoppable cartwheels – that she must be taken seriously or not at all. “I’m just thinking about it,” she says, “because kids can die – you know, car accidents and that kind of stuff.”

She turns her body in perfect circles, her feet gently hitting the floor as she comes to a stop. She has always been like this – fearless, curious, wild. I learned early on to stand aside and let her go as much as I could possibly bear. I wish I could say something simple that would make her feel happy and safe and not think about such things. I wish I could give her the gift of certainty that my mother gave me with a kiss and a prayer so many years ago in a world faraway. But Madeleine and I both know that nothing is that simple anymore. There is the war, and the Sudan, and the two kids who were killed running across the busy avenue near our house. Death is real and so is the question of what happens after that. She can’t help but pay total attention.

“What do you think happens if there isn’t a heaven?” I ask her as she tries handstands now against the refrigerator door. “That’s the problem,” she says. “It could be like a dream maybe. Or something else we don’t even know about.” She turns herself right-side-up and smooths down her skirt, matter-of-fact. “I don’t know, Mom,” she says, preparing her bottom line. “I have doubts.”

No kidding. Me, too.

I tried to tell Madeleine about heaven when she was a pre-schooler, when death as a subject is on the top of the to-do list for development, but she wasn’t buying it. “How could heaven be any good?” she’d ask, “If I die first, and you’re not there, too?” I tried explaining that being with God would be even better than being with me, which Madeleine found completely impossible to imagine. I can’t blame her. Even now as a grown woman, I cannot fathom life without my mother either.

In the past, these kind of conversations would leave me feeling completely helpless and wasted, but for some reason today I feel peaceful and glad. I have her doubts, this time, and more confidence in Love. I believe in the way her mind craves question over a simple answer.

We talk for a little while, like that, about the possibilities, about near-death experiences and about being afraid. I tell her about Love and about God and about the hope I hold in my heart that nothing can keep us from that – not even death. She is folded into my lap now, taking in my scent, the warmth of my arms. The cadence of my voice carries her, even when she’s not listening, and I feel her soul fill up a little, buoyed by the physicality of human grace.

She wanders out of my arms to get a drink and try her cartwheels again. “Does that answer your question?” I ask foolishly, and she smiles.

“Mom,” she says, her old soul eyes shining, “I don’t even know what the question is I’m asking.”

Altars for Hope

We laugh at the absurdity of it all and the companionship of not knowing. “That’s why I make my altars, Mad!” I say, putting it together for myself in that moment. “So I can hold onto Hope when I don’t even know what I’m looking for.”

She knows these little pockets of sacred space around our house – those places where I place reminders of God’s grace and endless care. This is the thing that makes sense to her, and I breathe a happy sigh of relief. She kisses me and wanders off, smiling.

An hour later, I find her deep in her closet, arranging a favorite poncho over a tiny table – the hole for her head leaving a perfect circle where she sets up her icons – an old wire cross, some leaves from the yard, a tiny stuffed animal that she’s loved since babyhood. I can tell from the doorway, she is placing each object with ceremony, with Love.

This is my daughter – wild Peace folded into careful hands and tangled hair. She teaches me everything I need to know about heaven – that place where Hope makes space for all the kindness and love either one of us could ever ask for. The place where mystery melts into a kind of comfort that brings us happiness and joy.

• How do you make reminders of hope in your home?