The best is yet to be.

Whenever I'm invited to speak in public, I like to offer the disclaimer that I'm not really a public speaker. I'm a writer. I can totally sympathize with Moses when God asked him to spend some quality time with Pharaoh. "But, Lord, I'm slow of speech," Moses whined. So God sent Aaron to speak for him.

"Lord, what's the deal?" I complain when it's my time to stand behind a podium. "I've written more books than Moses. Why don't you send someone to speak for me?"

"When one of your books is in the Bible, we'll talk," God responds.

Recently I was asked to speak at an alumni weekend. My whining to God brought about the same response as it always does. Then, two days before the event, I received a phone call from the alumni relations director informing me that one of the alumni had just learned she was in the advanced stages of colon cancer and would be undergoing surgery at the very start of the reunion weekend.

Understandably, the attendees would be upset and the tone of the weekend would be far different than anyone anticipated. Since I was considered the main speaker, the director wanted me to be aware of what was happening.

The theme the academy had chosen for the weekend was "Together in Heaven." These words seemed even more appropriate considering the circumstances. I wondered how I could make my presentation one that would not only address the situation, but give grieving attendees hope. While we all wanted our classmate to recover, we needed to be reminded that death is not the end. It's simply a stopping place, a comma in the sentence of life.

As I considered what to do, I remembered a tradition that LeAnne Cornforth-Crawford sent me when I was writing the book Adventist Family Traditions. At a funeral, a friend told her that whenever a family member leaves after a visit, the others hold one finger pointing toward heaven until that family member drives out of sight. The finger pointing to heaven means, "God be with you. We love you. And if we don't see you again on this earth, we will see you when Christ comes again." After the funeral, the entire family stood in the doorway pointing toward heaven as she and her family drove away.

Not long after that experience, LeAnne's mother-in-law succumbed to lung cancer. At her funeral the entire family stood with one finger pointed upward as the hearse drove past. LeAnne told me, "One last time we got to say, 'Mom, God be with you. We love you. And the next time we see you will be when Christ comes.' It's a promise we plan to keep and a tradition we plan to pass on."

The alumni weekend turned out to be somewhat somber; surely not the carefree catching up with old friends that it might have been. But we all walked away realizing that when someone we love has cancer--or any type of debilitating illness--it's not the end. First, it's a beginning of new opportunities for us to "do unto others," helping out with errands, child care, or even just a cheerful card. Second, we all realized that, should modern medicine fail, death is not the end. It is only a resting place, a temporary separation, a comma. When God writes the sentence of life, the best is yet to be.

Celeste perrino Walker writes and speaks from Rutland, Vermont.