For Family Home Evening a few weeks I decided to do an Easter scavenger hunt so my kids could start thinking about the upcoming holiday. After looking at the dark things we collected (dirt, a piece of black plastic, a dead beetle), we read in the scriptures about the storms and darkness that covered the Earth when the Savior died. “Mom, in the movies it always rains during funerals, but that’s not always how it is, right?” one of my kids asked. “No,” I responded, “funerals happen any time, even when it’s sunny.” I thought about the time in my life when every year, and particularly every summer, seemed to bring a new funeral for someone I loved.

Thirteen years ago, I was newly married and had a summer job working full-time on campus at the university where my husband and I attended. I was a receptionist in the alumni office and part of my job included scanning the local papers each day for news related to former students. One summer afternoon I picked up the afternoon paper shortly after it had been dropped off at the door, and my heart sank as I recognized the grieving family in the large photo on the front page. My friend and former roommate had been hiking with her husband when a sudden thunderstorm trapped them on the mountain and were both instantly killed by a lightning strike.

My friend’s funeral took place on my niece’s first birthday. That night I gathered with members of my husband’s family to celebrate this sweet little girl who was so loved by my sister-in-law and her husband. Ten days later, my brother-in-law died in an accident on a hot August afternoon. We held another late-summer funeral, and wished for storm clouds and rain that would be a better reflection of our grief. The next summer my husband’s grandmother died; then the next year my great-uncle died in the fall. The summer after that my beloved aunt, just a year younger than my mother, suddenly died. And then the year after that, my grandmother died a short time after I gave birth to my son. Someone took a picture of me at the funeral; my face is pinched, and I can’t tell if it’s a reaction to the early-morning sun on a warm June morning, pain from my leaky body that was still healing from an emergency c-section, or grief at losing my grandma. It was probably a little bit of each of these things.

Death is the most universal of all human experiences and a vital part of the plan of salvation. This fact can sometimes lead us to dismiss the grief of losing a loved one or to treat funerals and mourning as routine. I know that at some point in my life I once had a fairly shallow testimony of the resurrection. I knew that God loved us, and took it for granted we would continue to live after death. However, as I grew older and as I began to lose people that I truly loved and cared about, I began to question this assumption that I had long taken for granted. There is a vast gulf between knowing about the resurrection and trying to reconcile that abstract future reality with living each day with a hole in your life created by someone who is no longer physically here with you. I have gone to my knees more than once seeking the assurance from God that his plan is real, that we will all live again, and that someday I will again see my loved ones reunited with their bodies. I’ve come to love the poetic phrase “the morning of the first resurrection” because I think that there is no better time for resurrection than first thing in the morning, when light first appears again after hours of darkness. Each year at Easter my thoughts turn again to that long-ago sunny morning when calm took the place of dark, stormy skies and Mary found her grief suddenly turned to joy. I look forward to the future day when we will be reunited with those we have lost—whatever the weather may be.

Have you seen the new Easter video produced by the Church? It is a lovely reminder of Christ’s gift for us.


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