I had a chance to go to the cemetery this morning. I hadn't been there since we laid my mum's ashes to rest last (I can't even remember) July, I think. A few things had changed since that time. There's a tombstone now. It took my dad a couple of months after the summer funeral to have the tombstone made and installed so I saw it for the first time today. It felt strange and wrong to see her name graven on the black marble tablet. And it felt very permanent. Engraving on marble is as permanent as it gets in this world, I guess.

Later on a train back to Tallinn I read Bob Goff's book Love Does. I hardly ever re-read books but this one I'm reading for the second time. And in one of the chapters he talks about how he once participated in Transpac Race which is a sail boat race from Los Angeles to Oahu in Hawaii. And how after more than two weeks on the ocean they finally made it to Hawaii and saw a beautiful tradition - when anyone finishes the race, there's a guy who announces the name of the boat and of every crew member over a loudspeaker, and he finishes his announcement with words "Friends, it's been a long trip. Welcome home." And this is what Bob Goff says (and I might have or might have not welled up when reading this):

I've always kind of thought that heaven might be kind of a similar experience. I read somewhere in the Bible that there is a book of life. I don't think that this book of life is full of equations, and I don't think that it's just a list of names either. I think this book of life is more like a book of lives, a book of stories. I bet it's all about people traveling in the direction of Jesus, trying to follow Him. People like me who made lots of mistakes and midcourse corrections. It's about people who stayed within the large circle of His love and grace, staying the course on a long line pointing toward Him. And their names weren't in the book because of what they did or didn't do. They were in there because of who God is and what He has done to draw a circle around them. After we each cross the finish line in our lives, I imagine it like floating into the Hawaiian marina when our names were announced, one by one. And at the end, perhaps simple words spoken by loving and proud God will be, "Friends, it's been a long trip. Welcome home."  

To hell with tombstones and engravings and permanence. 'Welcome home' is more real than any of that **** you see at the cemetery.