"My Mother Was There to Meet Her."

I'm sure I blogged about this recently, but I'm not sure exactly when or what I said. There is, or at least was, some debate on the subject of whether or not our families will be there in heaven to meet us when we die. I think some evidence for the affirmative surfaced recently, which would have been why I blogged about it, but now I can't remember what the evidence was. However, to that evidence, I would add the experience President Eyring's father had shortly after his wife, President Eyring's mother, passed away.

Dad excused himself to go into his nearby bedroom.

After a few minutes, he walked back into the living room. He had a pleasant smile. He walked up to us and said quietly, “I was worried that Mildred would arrive in the spirit world alone. I thought she might feel lost in the crowd.”

Then he said brightly, “I prayed just now. I know Mildred is all right. My mother was there to meet her.”

Now, I'm not trying to put words into President Eyring's mouth. His father said it, not him, and his father didn't say it over the pulpit at General Conference, so it's still not exactly canonized scripture. However, President Eyring did repeat his father's claim over the pulpit at General Conference, though he neither confirmed nor denied the claim's validity. If the claim was untrue, I think President Eyring would have said so, or that he wouldn't have repeated the claim in Conference in the first place. On the other hand, he didn't exactly confirm the claim either, which would have settled the matter once and for all.

As far as I'm concerned, the question is still pretty much up in the air, but there seems to be more evidence to support the idea than to undermine it. As far as I know, there's no canonical support to the claim that our relatives will be there to greet us, but the popular opinion seems to be that they will be, and I haven't heard any strong evidence to suggest that they won't. At the very least, if President Eyring's father's feelings were correct, then Eyring's grandmother was there at the pearly gates to welcome his mother, and if that sort of thing happened to her, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if something similar happened to us when we pass on.