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Sample Story
Viva Forever
"I
really miss my Grandpa and I hope someday when I die I go to Heaven,
too.”
- Lauren Elizabeth Poduch, in her journal May
27, 1999
lanning a funeral service for one’s nine-year-old is
something none of us ever plans to experience. Linda may be our
minister, but for this undertaking she was virtually our savior. She
seemed to just know how to interpret our hopes and desires to make this
a kid friendly event. Our motto was that if Lauren wouldn’t have liked
it or understood it, it didn’t belong in the service. Linda, the mother
of three girls herself, arrived at our home on a Sunday afternoon to
plan the “Celebration Service” for Lauren. We were numb, dazed. She laid
out the plans that included lots of children’s hymns, select youth of
the church to sing and the grand finale, Viva Forever, a song
recorded by the Spice Girls. If you haven’t had the opportunity to read
the words to this song, do so. They give you a renewed sense of
everlasting life.
Additionally, we planned to supply markers and helium
balloons for messages to be written and released. The little ones would
draw pictures and send them off to the great mysterious beyond somewhere
in the clouds. I can’t help but wonder what the kids envisioned as their
balloon destination? Perhaps Neverland? Or possibly in Oz with Dorothy?
Or maybe, just maybe, they were off to the human shaped clouds! You’ll
understand that reference by the end of this chapter.
As for funeral cuisine: none of the food was to have any
redeeming nutritional value. Lauren would have liked that. Somehow the
ladies of our church just appeared that day with sugar, carb, salt and
fat-laden foods. To this day I have no idea how this happened. I’ve
permanently lost bits and pieces of that time.
As our meeting with Linda concluded on this tear-stained,
mind-numbing Sunday, she asked if we’d like to have any passages read.
In truth, neither Tony nor I were exactly what you’d call biblically
oriented at the best of times. In this, the worst of times, we drew a
blank.
The day wore on. Family members were arriving from around
the country. The doorbell rang constantly, marking the arrival of fresh
flowers, casseroles, fruit plates, breads, veggie and sandwich platters.
All were gratefully accepted. The house was buzzing. I found it nigh on
to impossible to sustain sanity in these moments. A peaceful retreat was
all I could handle. I tried to breathe through the day moment by moment.
In the late afternoon, I stole away to my bedroom. Here I closed my eyes
and tried to make some sense of life. As I opened my eyes, Tony stood
before me with a dumbstruck look on his face. He handed me a kid’s diary
and asked me to read through to the last page. It seemed that he had
been drawn into Lauren’s room. He knew he was looking for something, but
had no idea what it was.
He’d looked in her closet and drawers. He’d shuffled
through her numerous treasured collections. You know the type of thing,
pennies, pretty rocks collected on family trips, baseball cards and so
on. Nothing felt right. He was looking for something,
something specific! But what? His attention turned to her beloved
books. He scanned the bookshelf. There he noticed the diary. Neither of
us had been aware that Lauren had kept a diary. The first few pages were
written kid style, with words jammed together on the page. Misspelled
words had been sloppily crossed out. She had dated each of her entries
and added her age at the time, which provided a chronological snapshot
of her life. As I read, I discovered treasured entries about school
projects, pets, doubts regarding continuing with piano lessons, a new
love of soccer and such. It was her last entry, though, that took my
breath away. By way of background, you need to know that my father had
died 18 months before we lost Lauren. He was 82 when he died. As fate
would have it he happened to leave us on my birthday, January 19th,
in 1998. He had been just the best grandpa (and dad for that matter)
ever. We all missed him. Here, neatly written on every other line, with
no spelling errors, we found this offering from Lauren:
“May
27th, 1999, 9 years.
I
don’t know why, but ever since my grandpa died I’ve been praying to God
every night. I really miss my grandpa and I hope someday when I die I go
to heaven, too. There is one letter that I wrote to my grandpa that
never got sent. I’m sad. I wish that grandpa was still alive and got the
letter and he wrote back saying he loved me, and he will always love me.
When I die I want to be in heaven with grandpa, Mom (Carol Poduch), Dad
(Tony Poduch), Maya, Mandy, Belle, Kim, Kiwi, and all of my belongings
and last but not least, grandma.
Thank
you, Lauren Poduch
YU
!"
On the lighter side, as we read this, we laughed at our
names in parenthesis, as though she had somehow wanted God to be crystal
clear with respect to her parentage. Not taking any chances on the
important stuff! Kim seemed to rank somewhere below our two family dogs
(Belle and Maya) and Lauren’s goldfish (Mandy). She did surpass the
budgie (Kiwi) though, a fitting spot at a time in Lauren’s life when
jealousy of her big sister seemed inevitable.
More poignantly, this was the last thing Lauren ever
wrote in her journal, six weeks before her death. Naturally, this became
our reading at the service to celebrate her short life. Many mourners
present that day laughed and cried as they listened to her words being
read. We sat in wonderment, trying to ascertain where this prognostic
entry had come from. Nightly prayers had never been a part of our family
routine. What was it that made Lauren start to pray? Did she know in
some recessed part of her being what was to befall her? As a family we
had never discussed nor told Lauren that grandpa was in heaven. That
just wasn’t a part of our vernacular at the time. Why did she assume
such? None of her other journal entries had ended with a “Thank You”.
Who, exactly, was she thanking?* All of her other entries were
reporting and reflecting on the facts of her life. This entry dealt with
a different topic altogether. Lauren appeared to be pondering her place
in eternity at the ripe old age of nine. She was also thinking about
God’s role in her life and, it would seem, without much guidance from
us, praying to him/her. Why did she do this? Most importantly she was
thinking and writing of her own death. Imagine! How many nine-year-olds
do you know who explore these topics in the privacy of their own
thoughts?
I wonder if you are beginning to unravel the deep,
special message we received from our nine-year-old via her diary.
Answering the above questions is a personal journey. I leave it to each
of you to ponder, in your hearts and minds, what your answers would be.
As for us, we know with our entire minds, bodies and
souls, how to answer these questions. Lauren left us an amazing clue
regarding her fate. She guided Tony to a piece of the puzzle that has
brought our family and friends great peace. We love you honey, always
and forever. I couldn’t have said it better, Viva Forever.
YYYYY
Shortly after writing this piece, I had a seemingly
connected experience. While reading “Ask Your Angels” by Alma Daniel,
Timothy Wyllie, and Andrew Ramer, a passage caught my eye. These authors
provide detailed instructions regarding how we can experience angels in
our daily lives. They note that when people are transcribing messages
received directly from their angels, it is a common courtesy to end the
passage by writing “Thank You”. So did Lauren receive a message from her
angels? In truth, I have absolutely no idea. I do know this though: as I
contemplate where Lauren’s “Thank You” came from, I find the spirit of
hope.
YYYYY
There
is one last piece to this story. Just before Christmas in 2004, I received an email from a young girl, then 15, who had
been in Lauren’s Grade four class. While both girls were top students,
the friend was widely considered the “smartest kid in class” (I quote
Lauren directly there). The friend mentioned in her email that while she
had not considered issues surrounding death and dying at the age of
nine, apparently Lauren had. On the last day of school, a mere two weeks
before Lauren’s accident, the two girls had been lying in the school
yard together after most of the kids had merrily made their way home for
the long awaited summer vacation. They looked at the clouds.
Lauren asked her friend, “Where do you think we go when
we die?”
The friend had no answer. Lauren went on to provide
details regarding HER thoughts on the subject. She looked at cloud
shapes and identified animals that they resembled.
"I think the horses go to horse shaped clouds, the dogs
to go dog shaped clouds and we go to human shaped clouds”, said Lauren.
Copyright 2007 by Carol Poduch. All rights reserved.
Not
to be reproduced without written permission from the author
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