Is the rising cost of this industry becoming too much for your family to endure?

It is both a wonderful and terrible aspect of God's love that when we lose someone we love, the deep pain we feel can draw us closer to God, the author of life and death. As Christians all our relationships are a triangle, with one another and God at the head. Our deepest selves are connected to one another and to God because it is in Him we live and love and have our true being.

Everyone is familiar with feelings of grief. These feelings range from mild, momentary unhappiness to feelings of intense and acute emotional suffering that take a long time to heal. These feelings can be caused by disappointment, discouragement, fustration, trouble, difficulty, a sense of futility, deep regret or some specific loss, disaster, misfortune, accident, or mishap.

It is a mystery - how in the midst of my husband's dying I can feel our shared love, our shared lives so poignantly and passionately while simultaneously withdrawing emotional energy from our relationship.

My husband's tongue and cheek muscles have also fallen prey to ALS (Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosis) and he has difficulty enunciating his words clearly. But our desire to live each moment that we are granted has led us to make the decision that "I'm gonna live, live, live until I die".

I have always loved this commandment mostly because it assumes we love ourselves. At the very least it seems to give us permission to feel good about ourselves and to treat ourselves well because then that is the standard for the treatment of others. I have rarely seen, in this day and age, the kind of love God would have us have for ourselves.

The choice between cremation and burial is a very personal one and some will flat out not desire this alternative.