Читать книгу Visits to Heaven - Josie Varga - Страница 13

Let go . . . .release . . . .my body was barely there . . . there was so little mass of flesh, skin, and bones it wasn’t hard for me to believe I could float above myself . . . and so I did.

Gently, softly, spiritually I rose above the bed.

I wasn’t cold anymore . . . I wasn’t warm either.

I was looking down at me still curled up like a seashell beneath the sheets. The sheets were still. No movement of my shoulders or chest . . . surrounded by darkness, deep grey, no light beneath the door into the hall . . . no filtered light through the shades on the window . . . no light anywhere.

Panic, frantic, terror surged up my throat.

Where were the lights?

Where was the power?

There’s no storm, no wind, no lightening, no rain . . . yet no power.

Didn’t hospitals have generators for power outages?

I could no longer see myself on the bed . . . but I couldn’t feel the bed beneath me either. Please, oh, please turn on the lights!

I felt pins and needles on the tips of my fingers and the tips of my toes . . . as if my muscles were “falling asleep” from the outside in . . . a light, please dear God, a light!

Squeezing my eyes tightly closed like I did when I was a little girl searching for the orange on the inside of my lids indicating light on my face, I waited and prayed for a pinpoint of whiteness in the darkness around me.

Slowly opening my eyes, there was a needle of light aimed at me. Did I die? I was being pulled toward the pinpoint, and it was getting larger the nearer I was to its source. Like filings onto a magnet, I was drawn to the light, the source.

I wasn’t moving. The light was attracting my body through a darkened hallway with people on both sides who weren’t flesh-and-blood people with distinct features, rather people with identities I sensed, but didn’t recognize. A ballerina, a firefighter, a cowboy, and a seamstress formed a line on each side of me. I didn’t know who they were, but I understood what they were. Occasionally, a child, a dog, a bird, or another child in a baseball uniform stood between the taller people on either side of me.

Halfway home, I said to myself . . . halfway home to heaven.

A woman stepped from the side, “Natalie?”

It was a soft voice, a melodic voice, a gentle voice, a mother’s voice.

“Yes?” I answered, fear falling away in the gentle embrace of her voice.

“Come with me, Natalie. I’ll take you to the light.”

My anxiety was replaced by warmth, the feeling of being wrapped in a heated baby alpaca blanket without the weight of a wrap. The nearer to the light, the warmer I felt as the current pulled me closer and closer.

No more fear, ever.

The comfort of company . . . loving, supportive, accepting . . . company was lifting me, encouraging me, helping me to my soul’s destination.

The woman beside me felt familiar from my mother’s side of our family . . . although I didn’t recognize her. Petite and slightly slumped, she took my arm as if we were strolling in a park together. She wore an old-fashioned hat with a lacy veil reaching the tip of her nose. The hat matched her navy blue dress hanging well below her knees. She had sturdy shoes, granny shoes with a short thick heel on the patent leather lace up tops. Her dark brown hair indicated she was younger now than when she passed over; I felt her hair was grey at the time of her death. A string of pearls rested gently around her neck.

“You’ve had it rough, haven’t you, Natalie?” She said in her lovely voice.

“Yes,” I responded.

“Food,” she said. “Something that sustains us, rewards us, and entertains us—one of God’s many gifts . . .”

Another woman on my left emerged from the group and approached me. She was surrounded in a white glow, like a full body halo. Looking at her I felt energized and free, finally free. Free from my fight with food, free from being controlled by others on the outside, free to be me from the inside. Yes, definitely, this was heaven . . . because the woman in the glow was my grandmother Agnes Tate.

With recognition came all the emotion of missing her for the last fifteen years. The last time I saw her alive, cancer had sucked the life from her body. I remember her funeral: seeing her in the casket, and she was breathing. I was thirteen-years-old, and her passing hurt me the most of anyone in the family. As my brow furrowed in confusion at the evidence of life remaining in her embalmed body, I looked up to see her standing beside her casket. Smiling at me, she looked healthy and at peace. Then she told me she was all right and free from the pain caused by the cancer. Her spirit self faded after she delivered her message.

I remember tugging on my mother’s sleeve, then nodding toward her mother’s image across the coffin from where we stood.

“Mom, Mom . . . look she’s breathing . . .”

“Natalie Ann, stop it. They all look like they’re breathing lying there . . .” Apparently what I said upset her even more because she turned away and went back to her seat. I looked for her spirit self, but she too had gone.

Emotions swelled as I reached to embrace my grandmother in recognition and love. No pain for either of us anymore. We were alive; we were well. Suddenly I was so full of the light of inspiration that I wanted to announce my discovery to the world.

But how could I do that from this side?

Before I could state my intention, my grandmother answered me, “You must return; you have work to do; you have children to love and to raise . . .”

I was about to object that John was a good father and could raise Carrie and Ashley—they didn’t need me . . .

“Hush,” my grandmother replied before I finished the thought. She directed my attention to a look into the future if I stayed with her in heaven.

I watched my mother’s grief at my passing.

“She blames herself,” my grandmother, her mother, communicated to me. “It’s not expected when a child predeceases a parent . . . made more painful when the parent blames herself for not doing enough to prevent it.” Stubbornly I didn’t want to return for it was a one way trip . . . I knew if I went back, it was to stay. “Look, look at your daughters without you . . .”

Carrie, headstrong and independent, acted as if my passing didn’t matter to her at all. Growing into a lovely young woman with a large chip on her shoulder, she approached every relationship expecting abandonment. Angry, full of resentment at her mother who didn’t care enough to fight her disease, Carrie wore her rage like armor, protecting herself from any further pain. The ice cold vibe from her personality belied the burning hot pain she covered within. I watched her set herself up to never trust anyone enough to really love them . . . and therefore robbing herself of the experience of being loved.

Ashley, my baby girl, felt most left out because she no longer had a mother. Lonely and alone, since John favored Carrie, Ashley was left to grow up on her own. Her future held no close girl friends to shop with, giggle with, talk about boys with . . . instead she retreated within herself. Her self-spun shell was as impenetrable as her sister’s full suit of armor.

Turning toward my beloved grandmother, I wanted so badly to stay . . . and understood what a selfish decision that would be . . . she assured me that she will always be with me until I can rejoin her here in heaven.

Before my return, I witnessed some parts of my life where I had hurt others and different parts where others had hurt me. There was no judgment, simply acceptance of the events as they had occurred. Indicating that it was time to return, my grandmother embraced me again. I clung to her wanting answers to the eternal questions:

• How does heaven work?

• Does God really hear our thoughts and prayers?

• Does God control our time here on earth?

• Do we survive physical death?

• How can I help people believe that there is a heaven?

• How can I make a difference?

Suddenly I knew, and with the knowing I was swept back into that ice-cold body on the bed. My heart jump-started with a thud, and I was back. I knew I was back because of my pain—every bone shook with chill; the little flesh I still had on my skeleton shrunk close to my bones tightening the ligaments, pinching my face against my skull. It looked like a death mask on a gargoyle. Grimacing, I pushed my front teeth with my index finger and felt them give ever so slightly. Anorexia will make your gums recede because of the dehydration and that, in turn, will loosen your teeth in their sockets. Squeezing my biceps, I felt ropes where muscle should have been. Reaching for my thighs, I felt bone, not flesh. What had I done to myself? And why?

My death was inevitable . . . and necessary. Its occurrence provided the impetus I needed to overcome my shyness, my reluctance, my resistance to my gift.

The next day I awoke with purpose, confidence, and the will to live. I had a mission, I had wonderful news for those who were open to hear it; I had a gift . . . and as they say in the Bible in the parable of the “Talents”:

“To whom much is given, Much is expected.”