When we were children, all of us remember “visiting” some favorite great grandpa, or grandma, or aunt or cousin…

(The connections of the generations do keep getting closer, don’t they?)

… and we had to file past an open coffin with a corpse, all the time thinking things like, ‘Grandpa never wore a suit,’ or ‘She never wore that much make-up,’ and thoughts of distraction like that.

‘Barbaric!’ I thought. ‘Why would any civilized people do this?’

‘I know… I’m going to put in my will that if you have an open coffin “viewing” of me, I’ll come back and haunt you!’

Well, that was yesterday; but one other thing I noticed, as I attempted refusal to look at the dead corpse as I dutifully filed by the coffin: a little girl.

She was sitting with a man in another room (probably her daddy), and she was coloring with crayons.

So when I surveyed the scene for a place of escape (though there seemed no escape from this gloomy place), I walked toward the child, looking for a lost glimpse of joy.

—

I glanced toward saddened, tear-filled eyes of her father and stooped down to the child.

“What’cha drawing?’ I asked.”

The little girl looked up into my eyes. “Heaven.” Then she looked back to her paper and continued to color.

I studied her picture and looked at her father, then back to her drawing.

“How do you know there’s a Heaven?” I inquired of her (out of the clear blue sky)?

Then her loving little eyes looked up toward me and her meek little voice boldly proclaimed:

“IF there wasn’t a Heaven, I COULDN’T DRAW IT.”

Silence… (I had not expected this.) I felt ‘a sadder eyes’ of others gazing our way. The little girl didn’t go back to her drawing, either, as if she was expecting my reply.

(But I didn’t know what to say to this little girl, sitting beside her daddy with tears in his eyes.)

“I better tell you about it,” she said.

“I WAS THERE! And I see you don’t understand Heaven from my picture.”

I gave no answer to her childish innocence saying, “I was there.” But she was right: I didn’t understand it.

—