Florida Catholic | Death Provides New Life With The ‘Risen Lord’

Death provides new life with the ‘risen Lord’

This column originally appeared in the June 9, 2006, issue of the Florida Catholic.

HEIDI PECKHAM | FLORIDA CATHOLIC CORRESPONDENT

Published: 03.07.08

It is important to let them know of our faith traditions. It is important that children learn about death as new life.”

When I die, I want to die during the Easter season. I love the readings, the decorations and the music. It may sound a little strange to want to link death with the season of new life, but isn’t that what we are taught? Death is just that: new life. Death is new life in the risen Lord, new life with the risen Lord.

One night recently, I received two phone calls, each announcing a death. The first was the death of an infant girl, Tom and Melanie’s first child, Nora’s first grandchild. This young couple married weeks after my son married. This child would have been just four weeks younger than my grandbaby. Family life: The grief can be profound.

The second call reported the death of my Uncle John. I remember when he married my Aunt Peggy. I signed their wedding register spelling my name wrong and printing the “e” backwards. I was only 5. Whenever I baby-sat for my younger cousins, I would get out that book and be mortified at my error. John had been sick for a very long time. It was a rare form of cancer, one doctors said had no protocol. So John’s family went to work and investigated and studied and prolonged his life with strange diets, many vitamins and immeasurable prayer. Family life, keeping life going — family life, giving life.

(Back in 2005), the world watched as the Catholic Church buried our pope. The gift our faith gives us all, through our baptism, is the gift of being children of God. We are all one family. We are one family — this tiny infant, Uncle John and Pope John Paul II. And because we are in the same family, we shall all have the same funeral. The priest will say the same words over my body when it is my turn. We are children of the same God: Family life is universal.

When talking to children about death, it is important that we ask them what they think they heard from us. It is important to let them know of our faith traditions. It is important that children learn about death as new life. Death is real and it is the job of the parent to empower children to cope with the realities of life. Teach them about our communion of saints. We can pray for them and ask them to pray for us. We will see them again, but in heaven, not on earth.

We shall see them in our new life, our eternal Easter season.

Peckham, diocesan secretary for pastoral ministries, is a licensed mental health counselor.

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Death provides new life with the ‘risen Lord’

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