I swallowed hard and looked away as a tear came to my eye.

Of course, I thought, maybe that’s her mommy in the casket. I had not had time for thought of all of the family connections of my lost loved one.

Friends…dear and rare friends… become just like family. We don’t really know them. They have husbands, wives, kids, moms, grandpas, and all the rest.

“We never really knew him,” I had just heard someone say either of the living relative or another family member who had died.

That’s right. We don’t really know them, do we?

So when the little girl said of a bright star on a picture of Heaven: “That one’s my Mommy,” I had not expected it.

“She’s not REALLY brighter than the other stars…” the little girl said, as I gathered my emotions and attention back into the room. “My mommy’s star is just brighter for me so that I can always see that she is still there.”

I thought about it. And I thought of this little motherless child, who now would no longer have the nurturing embrace of her mother for all of those moments in life when you really need a hug.

(I think another tear started from one eye.)

Then she asked me another question about which I had no idea.

—

Do you know anybody in Heaven?

Wow. I looked nervously about…

“I don’t know.”

I quickly tried to steer our conversation back into the stuff of crayons on paper. “Can we see in your picture?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, “We’ll have to look.”

We both examined her drawing a little more.

“What do YOU see?” she asked as she nuzzled up to me.

(A professional psychologist could not have asked a better question with a Rorschach ink picture.)

I stared into her picture of Heaven…

—