I think she started “Heaven” the night after the “XO” shoot. She went to the studio and started it that night, and then a week later the song was pretty much done. She sent it to me and said, "I want to shoot this video in Puerto Rico, what do you think?" and before I could really even complete my thought, she sent me an entire treatment that she had written for it, with reference images, story lines. Originally, her main inspiration for that song and that video was watching her mother lose one of her best friends. So Beyoncé’s treatment — which was incredibly detailed and fleshed out, shockingly so, at seven in the morning — was juxtaposing this gut-wrenching sad song with really happy visuals of two girls who are best friends doing all these amazing things, and then at the end of the video you find out that it was one of the girls' bucket lists, and she’s actually dead. So we went out there to shoot that, and in shooting it, we realized that a lot of the more epic moments that we had originally wanted to capture came across as contrived, and a lot of the natural things that we had filmed looked very real and very beautiful.

-Todd Tourso

Source

wow

I knew Ashley wasn't suppose to be her daughter.
Beyonce looked younger than her.

The song could still be, but the video isn't.

Maybe because they're both going to lose each other?

and she’s actually dead

I thought they were praying.

Originally posted by YeaBey4ever That's what I originally thought but I still don't get the part where she was holding Ashley's hand in the church and they were both crying. Was she there in the spirit?

Originally posted by RichGirlPlanet Maybe because they're both going to lose each other?

Originally posted by Shinning Maybe Ashley had some sort of terminal illness and they knew she was dying soon so they were praying?

The Queen is so involved and in control of every
aspect of her projects.

If Ashley was carrying out a list of things to do before death, it's safe to assume she was suffering from a terminal illness.