thank you everyone, this is so helpful. I will definitely check into Albom's book I loved Tuesday's with Morrie and I wanted to read the other one then just forgot about it, thank you Mulan.
DE, I know what you mean about the memories. My grandfather died more than 20 years ago, and so I have been through this process with him, because he was as much my 'real' father in my heart as my Grandmother was my mother. I was a child when he died so I took totally on faith that I would definitely see him again, in the resurrection. In fact, that was why I got baptized, within three months of his death because I was so desperate to be with him that I would have done anything.
The way I eventually coped and consoled myself was by spending as much time as I could with grandma. That has been my coping mechanism for 20 years, thinking, well at least she's still here. Now I don't have that and I find I am reacting with the same emotions I had as an 11 year old when he passed only now the adult in me has lost all faith in the promises that JW's made me.
In the past few years, I had the sense somehow that my grandfather was somewhere with the two babies I lost to miscarriage. The feeling comes and goes but mostly, in the past few years I had the sense that he was watching over me and making sure that I met my second husband, because the way that we met was truly beyond normal. I also have been amazed at how much like my grandfather my second husband is, my grandmother even commented on that many many times as has my mother.
I don't know why it's so hard for me to place grandmother with grandfather now, though if there is an afterlife, that would be my dearest wish, because she never took off her wedding rings or stopped loving him. She longed to be reunited with him, to the point that she often told me that she didn't worry about dying at all and if she did she didn't want me to grieve (funny that I just remembered that now) she said once she was gone she'd have nothing to worry about anymore and then she'd "wake up in the morning" in the new system with her beloved husband.
I'm trying to work all this out forgive me for going on so. I really appreciate every single post here. I am reading the ADC website now and I find that my first knee-jerk reaction was to think of Englishman's fear of demons thread because of the JW indoctrination that anyone thinking they were communicating with the dead were communicating with demons...but I am forcing myself to take a more openminded approach because I just do not know.
Maybe none of us can know before we go. I hope that someday, somewhere no matter where, I will be reunited with them again.
love
essie
