In Heaven

“I think you would like my daughter. Want to see how she looks like?”

“Oh? You think so? Sure..let me see.”

She takes her phone out and show me a picture of a pretty young girl in her twenties.


“Pretty… takes after her mom I suppose? Where is she now?”

“In heaven……………died in a fire.”

“Oh… I’m so sorry………long time ago?”

“It’s OK. Just last year actually…”

I too shocked to say anything for a few seconds. My heart sank. From behind that smile came a deep sadness when she talked about her daughter.

“We were very close. People used to say we were more like sisters. We’d talk to each other about everything….even about sex.”

“How did it happen?”

“They say it was the electrical socket that caught fire. She got trapped inside… I lost everything in that fire. By the end of the day, I only had the cloths on my back.”

I dared not ask anymore. The thought of this persons daughter dying so tragically in a fired was a bit overwhelming. To listen to her talk about it so candidly barely a year later was also another thing. I still find myself not very good at dealing with death.

I know no parent would even want to see their children go before them. They want to die knowing their children live on. In one of those rare show of emotions, my father once shared with me that he had a dream; and in it I died in front of him. It shook him so badly that he woke up from his sleep palpitating and sweating. I looked at him and I could see that it was a thought that genuinely disturbed him.

I think I understood perfectly. When I was 6, I dreamt that I was digging a grave for my father and mother during twilight. The sky was orange, I was sobbing and I was using a shovel to move the dirt. It disturbed me so much I woke up crying and ran next door to my parents room, banging the door telling them not to die.

People have asked me why I believe in God. And this is one of those reasons why - death. I don’t know how to live life and not despair if all there was to it was to be born, live, suffer, then die, the end. I cannot believe that life on earth is pointless… because every fibre of my being, every strand of my existence tells me that we are here for a reason. There is a meaning to all of this. And that meaning is found in the divine.


That night as I drove home, I thought about what more I could have said to comfort her. Perhaps I could have said that she's in a better plance now, with God.. But it’s hard to talk to someone about heaven when the word ‘God’ and ‘faith’ isn’t in their dictionary. Then I remember what she said in the beginning... She said her daughter was "In heaven..."

Funny how people can live their life completely ignoring God, yet talk about heaven when faced with death.