Ellie's Heaven

I have mentioned our grabulous friend, Esther many times.  First she lived in Memphis and was great friends with my sister.  Then we had the good fortune of having her move to Middleton, WI, a short drive from our home.  Ellie often talked about how lucky we were to not have to travel all the way to Memphis to see Esther.  Esther's daughter, Mia was a wonderful friend to Ellie.  Although they did not get to see eachother nearly often enough, every time Mia would be around Ellie, she would be seriously interested in whatever imaginitve thing Ellie was doing--creating words or feeling villages. Not  just interested to appease Ellie, but truly, authentically interested. 

When Ellie was much younger (maybe 5), Mia came with Esther to visit the hospital.  When she arrived, Ellie was hiding her arm under a blanket so she wouldn't have to look at the IV attached to it.  Mia kept asking what was on Ellie's arm, Ellie would respond that there was nothing on her arm.  Mia kept insisting that there was something there while Ellie kept insisting that there wasn't.  

When Esther told Mia that Ellie was not getting better, Mia cried all night long.  Proclaiming that it was "not fair".  Esther was afraid to tell Mia about Ellie's passing until after  Mia had participated in a big spelling bee.  I wanted to share the e-mail she sent me.

 

So I finally told the kids last night.  We were all hanging out in Mia's room last night talking about school and whatever and I just sensed it was the time to tell them.  Mia cried immediately and Jonathan was just silent and looked down.  Mia calmed down after a few minutes and we all talked about Ellie being in heaven and discussed our favorite memories of Ellie.  As you can imagine, there were a ton of questions. 

 

Mia said she had been praying everyday at dinnertime that Ellie wouldn't die.  Jonathan wanted to know who gave her cancer.  They wanted to know how she passed.  I explained how she was in her room with her family and surrounded by all her stuffed animals and books - everything she loved.  How she was also surrrounded by her angels and talking to them.  They were intrigued by this.  I told them how once when Ellie came over to our house, I was alone in the basement with her and since Aunt Susan once told me Ellie could see angels, I asked her.  Without any hesitation, Ellie said yes - she could see angels.

 

We talked a lot about heaven and what it may be like for Ellie.  Mia imagined Ellie entering the gates of heaven greeted by teddy bears with hearts on them opening the gates for her.  Mia believes Ellie lives in a mansion and has a room for each of her interests - naked Groovy dolls, books, stuffed animals.  Jonathan chimed in that there must be a crayon peeling room.  Mia is thinking about drawing a floor plan of her mansion. 

 

We talked about how we would see her again when we die and go to heaven.  We talked about how happy she is there without any pain and she's probably playing around all the time.  They asked whether she felt pain in dying and I told them how I believe the first thing she felt would be unconditional love.  How her life must now be full of all the love she could ever want and that in heaven, there is nothing more she would want -- true fulfillment.  I got this from a book called "90 Minutes in Heaven" by Piper who was in a terrible car accident and pronounced dead and came back after being 90 minutes in heaven.  He describes his 90 minutes in this book.  Truly amazing.  I also have seen documentaries on people who said they died and went to heaven briefly and came back and the one thing they all said (whether they were religious or not) is that the first feeling was immense, overwhelming love.

 

Mia talked about all the Ellie words, her snuggles, and something I couldn't remember - but she said Ellie used to give us imaginary things from her pocket.  She said they had a name but she couldn't remember the name.  

 

So all in all, though my kids were sad, it was a great time of sharing and talking about Ellie.  In the end, I think my kids were happy that she was happy in heaven.