I am more spiritual than tied to a particular dogma, though I suppose I would class myself as a Christian before I'd peg myself as anything else. Nonetheless, I grew impatient with the people who, when my mother died, told me, "At least she's in a better place" and expected me to take comfort in that.
My mother suffered terribly with her short illness. I don't suppose anyone doesn't suffer with cancer. I was grateful that she was no longer suffering – I still occasionally hear, in my mind, that terrible strangled breathing of my mother's the last couple of weeks of her life as first, she slept, and then, slipped into a coma. But it enraged me whenever someone offered up the vision of my mother in heaven, breathing freely, as a reason for me to put aside the suffering I was feeling. I found myself wanting to scream any time anyone pointed out the obvious fact that, with my mother dead, she was no longer suffering. It infuriated me to the point that I literally had to bite my tongue a couple of times to keep myself from sarcastically snotting, "Oh, so you were there by her bedside when her breathing was so ragged and wet it sounded like someone slurping the last bits of milkshake from bottom of the cup? You want to tell me about my mother suffering?"
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