Remarried? Who do you end up with in heaven?

​If my wife, mom, husband, or dad dies – and then the person remaining here gets remarried or falls in love again – who do they end up with in heaven?
 
This question is not uncommon. “Who do they end up with in heaven?”, always strikes a nerve close to home with me. I can honestly say I lost a lot of sleep and suffered greatly with this as a child.

My mom died when I was 12

​My mother became terminally ill when I was nine. She suffered tremendously with cancer. She clung to life, surviving experimental treatments alone in a hospital, for years. She passed when I was 12. She was 39.
 
Before my mom became ill, our little family was the picture of happiness. We lived in a Cape house by the ocean. We were rich in love and laughter. For me, it was heaven.
 
When my mom got sick, every part of our lives came apart.
 
Barely a teenager when my mom died, I struggled with the questions of “Why?” “Why would God take the mother of four little ones?” “Why would God take someone so young?” Why would God take someone I love so much?” “Why did she have to suffer like that?” I cried tortured tears into the night, needing to know: “Where is she?” “Is she all right?” “Is she still suffering?” “Is she alone?”
 
Beyond the wrenching grief of my youth – and my concern for what my family was living through – I truly struggled with the dynamics of heaven. I struggled with how it all might work.
 
I worried greatly.  

​
​I was spinning in anguish.
I needed to know

​I lived and breathed a deep longing and a deep fear. Beyond the questions of death itself, and the youth of my mom, there was a lingering fear of never seeing her again.
 
My fear of never seeing my mom again was also expressed as a fear of my mom being abandoned somehow, because my dad would become close with or marry another woman. I thought maybe my mom perhaps would suffer jealousy in heaven…and suffer alone.
 
My sisters and I clung to an intense dream. The vision was we would all die someday and be together just as it was sitting around the chrome edged kitchen table, in our oceanside home, smiling and loving our family. We had lost too much. At least, we all begged God inside ourselves, don’t take away our dream…our desperate longing…to have our version of heaven back. To somehow, someday be a happy family again in heaven.
 
We certainly didn’t want strangers around, or some strange woman in our house. We did not want to be together in heaven with a stranger. Any idea other than what we thought of as OUR heaven with our family did not seem fair, true, loving or acceptable.
 
We didn’t understand heaven and how it really works.
 
I was spinning in anguish. I can truly say it still stings, to think about the gyrations of my own adolescence, and to think about the fears and misunderstanding surrounding those days.

My father remarried.
​It was not exactly the Ozzie and Harriet dream

​I did my very best, along with my sisters, to find fault with any woman who came along, because we just wanted to be a family again. In order to ensure that we were the only family in heaven, we made it miserable for nannies or for any woman who showed an interest in my father.
 
My father remarried and had more children for a total of seven of us. It wasn’t easy to come together as a family. I ran way at 14 and had tumultuous teen years. Over the years each of us has tried our best, under the strain of our family history, to love each other, to get along, to respect each other's challenges. I can say that after being such a hellion in my youth, I now love my stepmother, sisters and brother very much.
 
My stepmother and dad ended up married longer than my own mom and my dad were married. My dad – a war veteran – was buried only a few years ago at a revered National Cemetery. Each person in my family has wrestled with their own understanding of how heaven works, who should be buried with whom and, their own answer to this question:
 
If my wife, mom, husband, or dad dies – and then the person remaining here gets remarried or falls in love again – who do they end up with in heaven?
 
Sometimes these struggles can last a long time…even a lifetime. Sometimes we take them to our grave. 

So who DO we end up with in heaven?

​Is it whoever has been in a relationship the longest, wins? Or is it whoever was there first, wins? We have to get away from the assumption that heaven is just as it is here on earth. We have to get away from the thought that we can be separate, apart, alone and that there are winners and losers in heaven.
 
In my mediumship, I have only perceived love on the other side, that which is extended to all souls no matter what. And just as it is in heaven, God just wants us to love each other, no matter what.
 
It isn’t about who’s who and what’s what and who wins. It’s about loving each other completely. That’s the whole goal, that’s the purpose in life. We’re all connected. We are here to learn to love each other. We are all important. We are all significant, no matter where we are or what we’ve done.
 
Through all my experiences, I have come to believe in an organized chaos of nature, a continuous existence and consciousness beyond this lifetime and the universal love illuminating the intelligence without the constructs and boundaries of the human perspective. Some may be more ready to flow in the love than others who continue to reform and evolve with the light of spirit. But it seems, if you journey this life together, through whatever circumstances or struggles, you will be together again in a place of intelligence, clarity, with an understanding that explains the dynamics of our own interactions, clashes, crashes and intimacies of this lifetime.
 
This means that my mom and stepmom and my dad and all of us will know true love and how the challenges of our lives constantly called us to be love in this existence.

​It’s not about death, dying or our human frailties and fear

​Mediumship is not about death, or dying, or the human fears and frailties. It's about identifying the significance of every life, every soul and our personal responsibility to this life, to grow closer and more loving of each other. Of loving all for the sake of God.
 
In heaven, we are not tied to the Ozzie and Harriet definition of how things are supposed to be. We are not tied to one vision of a chrome-edged table with a few, select people. We are all one with every other soul. We are together in love, as love, as one with all souls and with God.
 
Our job is not to fear what God will do or think, but rather to discern what we are to do in this lifetime to learn to love each other and to prepare ourselves to be part of love in heaven.

What’s the answer to “Will we be together again”?

I lost my mother around Christmas. As the season rolls around, I am well aware that many people are wrenched with tough questions and the loss of loved ones.
 
After thousands of readings, I look back at all the people that have asked me this question: “Will we be together again?” I can assure you that I've come to an answer. It’s an answer I'm quite confident in.
 
Yes. You will be together again.
 
Because God loves us. And because, once we have passed, we will see the meaning of our life, why we were together, what we learned from each other, and how we grow, to be love, to be part of God and to love for good.
 
God bless you. With love and comfort in your heart, have a wonderful season.
 
Peace

Joe

© 2019-2020 Joseph P. Shiel III

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