Holy Jesus

[smokingboot]

A well meaning friend has just put a poem up on my wall about how people who die have not gone, they are just in heaven and near us all the time.

All the time! My father near us all the time!

Of course the poster didn't know, and nothing is ever accurate anyway. What matters is the kind feeling behind it, which I greatly appreciate.

Still, I might read the poem out to my brother just to watch his face.

Comments

[nyarbaggytep.livejournal.com]

They might not have known about your father, but even so it's fair guess that there will be some people we wouldn't want to be near all the time. And that said, I get the sentiment too.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

I do get it , and appreciate the great kindness behind it. In many ways, I think it is a sort of generosity - people sharing their own sense of devastation and comfort. It may not 'fit' but it's well meant. And it made me laugh, not angrily but because Dad was a person you would probably not want near you a lot of the time, never mind all of it. He was a fearsome character.

[abject-reptile.livejournal.com]

Sooooo... No hell or purgatory for this poster?

Oops. Wrong login. But you know who I am.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

I do and Hello there!

It is hard to envisage that the man I knew would hit the heavenly heights straight away, but then of course, there is much I don't know of his life. As a staunch Roman Catholic, had he known his death was coming, he might have expected a while in purgatory, and requested the presence of a priest and last rites. Still, he slept peacefully into death, and I hope remains at peace. The idea of being near his kids permanently might have spooked him out as thoroughly as it does us!

[semyaza.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of bad theology in the belief that someone hits heaven immediately. I don't at all mind the idea of the dead praying for us but no one wants to be watched.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

I guess it's the comfort of it, that sense of a dear one acknowledged and immortalised in eternal bliss. Theology gets lost in an idea of perfection, deserved or obtained anyway. No-one wants to say 'Well, actually he was a bit of a you-know, and might not have got an automatic pass to paradise...' Death makes everyone a hero or a saint, and love is in the eye of the beholder.

Ironically Dad might have been as ferocious as Brighton Rock's Pinkie on this matter when he was young. But things change. To someone deeply flawed, brought up Roman Catholic in deep and uncompromising fashion, the hope of purgatory might be a chastening relief.