A family relation had a child die several years ago. I know that her (the child who died) grandmother is a Mormon because I heard that she and her husband went on a foreign mission (oooh, how special) and the big deal them coming back was.

So on facebook I see this relation posting to their child lost those short years ago. And this grandma comments thusly.

"One year closer to seeing her and loving her."

Really? How is this a celebration of a life, lost young but still a life?

Excuse for not paying enough attention to the child in real life? That she can make up for it in the imaginary CK?

Ugh.

It's not a celebration of life, but a cry from the heart. I cannot imagine what parents who lose a child have to deal with. I've seen parents become alcoholics, religious fanatics, or go into deep depressions.

In such situations, I can offer no words of comfort, I just say to the parents, "Can I give you a hug?"

I hate death, especially the death of a young person. Anyone who says they have the answers to this type of tragedy is an idiot.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/21/2016 04:13PM by BYU Boner.

Boner speaks the truth.

My BFF and her husband lost their son to cancer. NONE of us have ever been the same. You just can't wrap your head around it.

I agree. It seems cruel to mock their grief or make assumptions about them

Mock their grief? Good grief!

It is their hopes I'm mocking.

bona dea Wrote:
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> I agree. It seems cruel to mock their grief or
> make assumptions about them


I agree. I can only hope never to go there myself. I have no clue as to what they're feeling or how they can possibly be getting through it. For anyone, even grandparents , or perhaps especially grandparents, to speak or write of the child's death in a celebratory way is beyond cruel.

BYU Boner Wrote:
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> Anyone who says they have the answers to
> this type of tragedy is an idiot.

And when their own death is the answer what are they?

I really, REALLY hope there is something on the "other side.
I don't have siblings. Both my parents died ages ago.

The one person I miss so badly is a best friend of 55 years. We were like twins, accidentally born to different mothers. We trusted each other with EVERY secret, every marital up and down, consoled each through rocky spots in life.

It's been going on two years since she died of a nasty disease. It still hurts every day that she is gone.

If I don't run into anybody else I know on The Other Side, I still hope I can run into my friend. Life just lost some of its sparkle when she died. I miss her so much.

Whatever they need to get through it. I think I'd feel that way for a time if my husband died.

woodsmoke Wrote:
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> I think I'd
> feel that way for a time if my husband died.

How long?

It's been eleven years for me, but the hole still hurts. I've seen people "get over" deaths, but part of me thinks some of us just get better at hiding it. He was rare, and I had a life with him. Sometimes it feels like the life we had was just a dream. You'd better believe that I would have begged Jesus or Satan himself to let him live.

I know a woman who lost her only child, a teenage son, to an auto accident. Deep end. After eight years, she is starting to come out of it. She's been a basket case. Another woman I know lost a toddler nearly 40 years ago to a traumatic accident she witnessed; I didn't know her then, but have known her for 15 years, now. Her mind is not right, and you can tell when she's been triggered and is on emotional shut-down.

What you are detailing is what I meant in this statement I posted earlier.

"Lots of things devalue life and seem justified because they make life intolerable."

To love and have that love mess you up that badly understandable causes people angst with living.

Mormons paint this families are forever reality around this problem and in this grandmother's case is counting down the years until they are dead because of their beliefs. I don't think she is dealing with grief better because Mormonism often sees grief as excessive and indulgent because to them families are forever.

Strange on forum like this I have to explain this so explicitly.

I hope never to know.

Rather cruel, really, this thread.

woodsmoke Wrote:
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> Rather cruel, really, this thread.

Rather cruel, really, how Mormonism twists things humans have been dealing with for thousands and probably tens of thousands of years. Worship of the dead is a common ideal humans tend towards. And really, if you want to be brutally honest, being human often is being cruel.

That is another thing humans like to do - forget their natures and let them be expressed in the license religions grant them in their organizations.

Mormonism is a terrible way to remember the dead. Putting food at a grave or memorial monument makes more sense than the cruelty of the purgatory of waiting Mormonism makes life for the aggrieved.

in the first Utah ward I ever lived in after my conversion.

She lost an eighteen month old and as I got to know her over months, I began to see how the strange Mormon beliefs were literally driving her out of her mind.

She had a picture of this beautiful child in every single room in the house, even the bathroom. One day I asked her if it wasn't painful to have his picture everywhere around her.

"Oh, no," she said, straightening the frame of a particularly large oilpaint tinted portrait, "I need the reminder so I won't sin."

"Come again," I asked, startled.

"I know that if I fall short, I will never see Billy again. Having him looking down on me helps me to keep sweet."

A few months later she announced that she was pregnant again. God had blessed her with new life and she was so happy. One day she showed up breathless and big-eyed with the same smile she always had. She said she was going around to every neighbor and telling us all that she was not, after all, pregnant. The symptoms of pregnancy were all in her imagination, she said brightly, and my doctor says it's important that I tell all of you.

"I'm sorry, Marie," I said.

"It's fine, really, she said, "I always have Billy to raise in the Celestial Kingdom, as long as I keep myself clean."

Needless to say, this terrible pressure resulted in a psychiatric break and my sweet neighbor spent some time in a mental hospital due to her talking to her dead child and even seeing him in a "god-given vision."


Just one example of the incalculable harm Mormonism does with their bizarre notions of an afterlife more important than the present life...and the terrible pressure to keep your family together in the CK by paying (and praying, but that's optional).



Kathleen

This is probably the sharpest and most malicious hook LDS Inc. has out in the marketplace of ideals for humans to buy.

They literally hold their dead loved ones for ransom.

Elder Berry Wrote:
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> This is probably the sharpest and most malicious
> hook LDS Inc. has out in the marketplace of ideals
> for humans to buy.
>
> They literally hold their dead loved ones for
> ransom.

Relatives of mine by marriage were hooked with this quite some time ago. The family had lost a child to SIDS. Between post-partum depression, grief, seasonal affective disorder, and an asshole husband, the mother was losing it big time. Someone tipped mishies off, and they showed up with 'Families Can Be Together Forever' sorts of literature. The family had been thoroughly Catholic before, and the oldest kid was too enmeshed in Catholicism to accept Mormonism, but he was expected to go along. It caused a rift that will never be healed.

My nephew died 10 years ago at the age of two. I was very close to him. I have a lot of pictures of him all over the house because I like seeing them and think he deserves not to be forgotten. I would hate to be considered weird for doing so. I have gotten over it, but that doesnt mean I want to forget him. People grieve differently and remember loved ones differently and judging them is cruel.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/21/2016 10:12PM by bona dea.

bona dea Wrote:
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> People grieve differently and remember
> loved ones differently and judging them is cruel.

It isn't remembering. It is counting down the years they have left in life until they can see their grandchild. I'm gonna judge that. Heaven can wait or why not just kill yourself? Does God make suicide sinful for more suffering?

It is crazy in my mind to pine for death because a loved one went before you when your grief doesn't keep you from leaving all your loved ones to go on a mission. It is just the devaluation of life by religion and I will judge that for myself as crazy. Lots of things devalue life and seem justified because they make life intolerable. Obviously, this woman thought it was cool to go on a mission and I think I heard they are considering another one.

Mormonism. Life is so much worse than death. Just ask Joseph. He said people would kill themselves to get into the Telestial Kingdom.

Maybe it works for her.Have you ever lost a child? If not, dont judge. If hoping to see the child in the next life is comforting, let it alone. Sure the woman who lost her mind is extreme, but blaming it on religion may not be fair either..Some people deal with lose better than others. It might have been even worse without the belief of an afterlife.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/23/2016 08:20PM by bona dea.

Maybe adding her death to the pile in a Facebook post is in poor taste and deserves comment. I haven't commented on it. So regardless of whether it works or not, no one is challenging "it."

I posted here because I knew it doesn't work for me and never did. This Mormon obsession with death and working towards/for it.

bona dea Wrote:
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> Maybe it works for her.Have you ever lost a child?
> If not, dont judge.

She hasn't lost a child and don't tell me not to judge. I would have to follow something to be telling others not to do some judging.

I don't tell others not to judge. It would be judgmental for me.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/23/2016 08:26PM by Elder Berry.

Whatever.Your words are offensive to those who mourn.

Whatever? Your words support a delusion Mormonism offers to have "work for" people. I find that highly offensive. What if Heroine "works for" someone? Would you endorse escaping life through drugged lenses?

You are quite the mote and beam loving person in my opinion. Judge not comes out of your mouth yet you've already judged me. "Whatever" "works for" you?

Death Cult Granny?

Sounds like the name of a band from the '90s! :-)

I lost my 16 yr old son in 1999 to Type 1 Diabetes. I feel there is more to our existence than where we are now. I do look forward to seeing "him" some day. Now that I don't know what I believe any more, I can only hope that I will.

Losing a child effing sucks.

-Dennis

I truly feel for you. I can't say I will ever know the depths of pain you've endured nor do I want to and to have believed in the Mormon "binding" afterlife?

Dennis Moore nli Wrote:
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> I lost my 16 yr old son in 1999 to Type 1
> Diabetes. I feel there is more to our existence
> than where we are now. I do look forward to seeing
> "him" some day. Now that I don't know what I
> believe any more, I can only hope that I will.
>
> Losing a child effing sucks.
>
> -Dennis

So sorry, Dennis.

No one knows for sure, either way!

I have a right to believe that my darling children and I are not going to be trapped in some telestial or terrestial kingdom, and not allowed to visit their Mormon grandparents in the hereafter. I believe that we will NOT "pass by each other as strangers." I have a right to believe that.

The Mormons have a right to believe that their child who died has a "special mission in heaven" or that "God called them home," or whatever.

Whatever brings us comfort. We all have to face death. Let's be kind, and give each other a break.

Exactly

Breeze Wrote:
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> We all have to face
> death.

But we don't have to hurry it along from the hopes that a death cult promises. We don't have to devalue life in our loses. We don't have to prefer an afterlife to life.

We don't have to do those things regardless of whether we want to out of our own pain and suffering. Our loved ones aren't suffering.

Give people a break? Sure. Give them a shot of religious Heroine? No way. I don't have to respect Mormon beliefs even in a Mormon's grief. Their obsessions with the dead and their pretensions with afterlife are nothing to give people a break for in my opinion.

I fondly remember my best friend from when I was 12 who died of cancer. I was shattered for months. I didn't take comfort that I would see him in the Celestial Kingdom. My family is a joke. Some of the people I have dearly loved are dead. Families are forever grants families some kind of exclusive right to be together after a death in Mormonism. It is something I've heard lauded all my life. And it diminishes the lost life in my opinion.

Judgmental people will judge. Haters in their own "right way" of doing things and saying things gonna hate. But grandma ain't right. She doesn't work for me. I'm not giving her a break. She is probably out spreading her family is forever poison right now.

I can see how in her view the death is just the NEXT life. So you just go from one to the next, the next one being supposedly the better life.

It does sound a little sad to me too, the way she expresses it, but I'm sure she might be very sad.

I've always actually wondered why so many people who SAY they believe in a heavenly life are so reluctant to go there. It seems like if you really really believed, that you'd be looking forward to it every day and wondering why you were being kept here for so long. I think most people simply HOPE there's a heavenly life.

I hope there's a life after this one. The thing is, if there IS another one, I suspect it will just be another life. I don't think I have any guarantee of it being better. I think maybe your spirit just finds a new physical form to occupy. (just my own way of thinking) So I feel like I need to make the most of this life and enjoy it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/25/2016 07:00AM by seekyr.