By Jordyn Glasz
“The baby is up there,” my 2-year-old daughter told me while pointing to the ceiling in December 2023. When I asked to clarify, she said, “Yes. The baby boy is up there.”
I miscarried at 8 weeks in May 2023. As I hugged my sweet girl after this brief conversation, I said I quick prayer of thanks that I was raised with a faith that allows me to believe in an eternal life, that we have the blessing of saints to pray for us and help us navigate this life, and for the first time since May, that I was given a baby that now lives in Heaven.
I was born and raised Catholic. My father’s family is also Catholic, and my mom converted to the faith around the time I was receiving my first Communion.
The people my parents allowed to be around me growing up were incredible influences on who I have become in my adulthood – and many of them were Catholic as well. They taught me how treating people is more important than quoting verses at them (Frances Mrkvicka), they showed me how sometimes you just need to say the truth as it is (Evelyn Gregoski), they taught me that taking care of those around you is more important than making money (Dan Harrahill), and they taught me how we can continue to learn from those who have passed before us (Loretta Hulinsky).
I was blessed enough to have these people in my parish community growing up. They prayed with me at Masses, they talked and explained Catholicism to me through their actions.
Family Friend Frances had a memory stronger than anyone I knew – up until she was in her 90s. She taught me to take time to talk to those around me and share in their lives. She taught me that our faith is a community, and we learn and grow from listening to the people around us.
Aunt Evelyn taught me that the purpose of this life is to make it to the next. She taught me to not fear death and to spend time with Jesus now amid the busy so to make sure we spend eternity with Him when time is done. She taught me to speak the deliberate truth in all matters.
Doctor Dan was our community doctor who loved what he did because he was able to help people. He showed me that our job in this world is to love our neighbors as ourselves. Through Dan’s cancer diagnosis and illness, up until he physically could not anymore, he was caring for the people of my community with everything he had to give. Dan showed me selfless love, and specifically loving through suffering.
Grandma Loretta taught me that those in Heaven are looking out for us, something she directly told my cousins and me the night my grandpa died. “Now you can talk to and ask Grandpa for prayers from Heaven.” Grandma and her sisters were always talking about death – always debating which of them would be going first and each acting excited to see The End.
All four of these influences in my life have since passed on (Dan, April 2017; Evelyn, May 2020; Loretta, August 2020; and Frances, September 2020). I still think of and pray for them often. I’m reminded each day of the way they lived their lives and treated others. I still try to emulate that every day, every moment, and in every encounter with other people.
Due to my Catholic faith, I have the hope of seeing them again, of thanking them again and for being with them to worship and love our Lord again, in Heaven.
I can imagine, thanks to my Catholic faith, all four of them, among other friends and family members in Heaven, holding and loving on my sweet baby – boy apparently – who lives in Heaven, while also loving on me still on earth with their prayers in Heaven.
They’ve shown me that our Catholic faith doesn’t end on this side of Heaven. How blessed are we.
