a drop of water

In a letter to his mother to console her on the death of his father, he wrote,

“Three years have gone and every trifle relating to father is still alive as ever inside me.  I am so certain my love, that we will see him again in an unexpected but completely natural heaven, in a realm that all is radiance and delight.  He will come towards us in our shared bright eternity, slightly raising his shoulders as he used to do, and we will kiss the birth mark on his hand without surprise. You must live in expectation of that tender hour my love, and never give in to the temptation of despair. Everything will return.”

-Vladimir Nabokov

My family and I visited the grave sites of both my mother’s and father’s parents this Christmas.  It has been almost six years since my last grandmother passed away.  I have a few memories stored away of my grandparents, their body language, the feeling of their wrinkly old hands holding mine, maybe a faint echo of a their voices. Deitrich Bonhoffer noted as he was led to his sentencing, “For you it is the end, but for me, it is the beginning of life.”

Nabokov bolsters his mothers countenance against despair by painting a beautiful vision of what Heaven holds.   It is a place where we will be reunited with those whom we have loved so much, restored to their former selves.  Nabakov lives his life not in despair of what he has lost in his father’s death, but in the life and glory of being reunited with his father someday.

Life here on earth is a great gift, and its end opens a door to something much greater in Heaven. I am excited to hold my grandparents hands again someday, to hear their voices in strength and clarity, to see their body language unhindered by age and ailment.  I want to live under the vision so eloquently painted by Nabokov, where death is just the next step in life in Christ.