Mourning

In the last seven months I've lost my mother-in-law, my brother, a cousin and most recently a brother-in-law.  It's obviously given me reason to think about death, dying and about life.

Years ago my dad told me that when people mourn it's a selfish act.  He said that if we truly believed what our religions teach us, we'd be happy for that person because they'd be in heaven.  We mourn because WE'RE going to miss them.  He was right.  Mourning is a selfish act.

I believe there are a couple different reasons for mourning.  First because we're going to miss the person.  Second because we have regrets.

There's not much we can do about missing the person.  We're human and we WILL miss our loved ones.  We can find peace because we know "they're in a better place", or maybe because we know they have no more pain.  But we'll miss seeing them, touching them, talking with them.

As far as having regrets goes, we CAN do something about that.  We can start right now treating our loved ones... and all people for that matter... with love, respect, kindness and compassion.  If we start doing that RIGHT NOW, maybe we can avoid that second reason for mourning.

Love,  Paula