Heavenly spirits

There must be something in the air at the moment.

Yesterday, I found this beautiful comment by a friend ...

•*¨*•.♥.•*¨*• I like to think that when ever I see a butterfly slowly flutter by, it is a dearly missed loved one coming down from heaven just to say hello •*¨*•.♥.•*¨*•

Then, I saw a wonderfully photographed monarch butterfly on the blog, serendipitous, which I follow.

And today, I was approached by a five year old in our school garden to talk about her dying Nana. We were surrounded by luscious vegetables and herbs at varying stages of growth, just a perfect setting for butterflies.

She wanted to know if there was such a place as heaven?

Why did she ask me? I am the least likely of people to ask about heaven ... My family attended church on Sunday mornings, yes, but only when we weren't playing hockey. I don't think we could be called committed Christians. I think we were late bloomers also, as I did not attend Sunday school and have never read the Bible.  All in all, my knowledge of the Christian faith, the spiritual world and death has come from personal experience and a deep love of history.

What did I say? Considering I am neither her parent nor guardian and she is five years old, I could say very little. But, I needed to say something because her eyes welled with tears when searching my face for an answer. I knew the look. All she needed to know was where her Nana, Alice, would be going ...

So I talked about our body and our spirit, two separate entities. I explained that when you die, your spirit leaves your body to go to heaven, which her Mum had said was somewhere up near the stars. I remembered explaining this to my children, after my grandmother died, and they were much younger than Miss A. It helped that they were engrossed by the movie Brother Bear, which is a tale about Native American Indians and their understanding of death and the spirit world. Nonetheless, this subject is tricky.

Miss A wanted to know what happened after your spirit reaches heaven. I remembered the beautiful story described in Before Sunrise, where a young boy believes he sees his recently passed Great-Grandmother in the rainbow created by the spray of his garden hose. So I talked about my own experiences of feeling my late Grandmother's spirit near me when I hand-sew costumes for my girls and suggested that she may find ways to remember her Nana in the same way. She said she had felt breezes the day before and perhaps this was her Nana's spirit ... but, as tenderly as I could, I reminded her that Nana Alice still had her spirit inside her body.

Tonight I wonder if I've said the right things. I wonder if I've said enough to comfort her. I wonder if I've crossed some boundaries that I shouldn't. Although I love this side of my job, talking to the kids, sometimes you are thrown a curve ball that you really aren't prepared for.

Bless you both, Miss A and Nana Alice, may your spiritual journeys be peaceful in this world and the next :)