Quotation re. remembering the deceased

convert

I found this quotation a few years ago just after a family bereavement, and it helped me remember my granny as she was rather than at her funeral. I said I'd share it in the hope that it may help others who are going through the same grief at the moment. I particularly like the last sentence.

During one’s lifetime, how many people one encounters! You speak to them, you laugh a little, you share a glass of beer, you sing. But once man is laid to rest beneath a cross, the end, he exists no longer. He is laid to rest and he is silent. He is silent. And if we hear someone respond, it is not from the bottom of the grave, we are simply dreaming. Sometimes someone comes to talk to us. Or to stroll around here and there. Or sometimes he stays seated. As if he weren’t dead. Or he takes up a cart, even begins some kind of work. Just like a living man. Like a true living man, not like a dead man. Why – one can never know, but in a dream you never see a dead man in his grave, nor even in the casket where he is laid during the funeral service. In our dreams the dead walk, they are seated in front of a pushcart, gesture to you with their hands. Just like the real living. Perhaps this is why the Lord gave dreams to man, so that he might see, as if they were truly living, those who exist no longer, but whom he would truly like to see again.
Juozas Baltusis
The Saga of Youza
(Vilrius, 1917)

Rubberlegs

convert wrote: »

I found this quotation a few years ago just after a family bereavement, and it helped me remember my granny as she was rather than at her funeral. I said I'd share it in the hope that it may help others who are going through the same grief at the moment. I particularly like the last sentence.

Thank you so much for that , thats beautiful, brought a tear to my eye. Dreamt about my Dad the last few mornings before waking, he died 3 wks ago. In these dreams he was eating feeds of dinner, or just walking around grinning his big grin. Probably because towards the end, he couldn't manage to eat anything at all and I was killed trying to think of the smallest thing he might eat. I like to think theses dreams are his way of telling me he's ok

jos28

Thanks a million for that, has me crying too. My Mam died in Aug at the age of 82 following a long struggle with Parkinsons. Since she died I dream of her more than ever and when I do dream of her, she is healthy. The wheelchair is gone, the tablets are no more and she is back to being my energetic happy Mam. Your quotation summed that up. Thank you.

Still love you and miss you everyday Mam. XXX