Proof of Heaven (22 page)

J
ust before his eyes closed, Colm saw something else too. He saw what it was that his mother had spoken of for so long. At the moment of Colm Francis Magee's final mysterious death, he saw arms reaching for him, enveloping him in an unconditional loving embrace. He felt the warmth of her touch, and he knew it would be all the love he ever needed. And he too smiled as he thought of it: she had been there the whole time.

Heaven was right there in front of him.

Yet, suddenly, before him appeared his Irish nana, Maureen Magee, so young and beautiful, and she was holding the hand of his enormous grandfather, Michael. He was as huge and strong as his mother always promised he would be. And he saw two people who he did not know, who he had only heard his mother speak of. Niranjana, with sparkling green eyes like his own mother's and wearing her white sari, held her son, Dhruv's, hand. Colm wanted so badly to go to them. But something stopped him. He had someone else to meet, someone who he had never met either, but who he would recognize without anyone having to say a word. Colm saw him instantly—he had his guitar strapped across his back and he had short, auburn-colored hair, and his face, his face was unmistakable.

Pierce looked just like him—and Colm knew—it had been his own face, the face he stared at in the mirror his entire life.

“Dad!” Colm ran screaming his name. His legs worked better than he imagined they could. They were strong, stronger than they had ever been, and with them he launched himself into his father's open arms.

“Oh, son. My son. I am so sorry. Please forgive me. I wanted to go back to tell you, to tell your mom how sorry I was. I made such a horrible mistake. So many. Please forgive me.”

“I do. Daddy, I forgive you. You're here. You're really here,” Colm said, wrapping his small arms around his father's neck and squeezing him as tightly as he could.

“I would have come sooner, but I had other plans . . .”

“It's OK. I understand. You would've if you could.”

“You have to go now, Colm.”

Colm looked at Pierce, Maureen, Michael, Niranjana, and Dhruv, who were all suddenly standing on what looked like water to him. They were all slowly fading, dissolving before him.

“It's not time for you.”

“But I don't want to go. I want to stay,” Colm cried.

“We'll all be here waiting,” Pierce said, kissing the boy on the cheek. You can tell your mama she's always on my mind and I see her clearly—I always have—and she's beautiful. Can you remember that? And don't ever forget that I'll be right there beside you when you wake up, when you're at school, when you're playing. You can count on it. I'll be there like I've always been,” Pierce said just before he disappeared completely before Colm's eyes.

“Daddy, no! I don't want you to go!”

As each one disappeared below the water's surface, Colm shouted for them to come back.

“Please, come back! Come back! Please don't leave me again, Daddy! I love you!” Colm's sobs echoed around him, and he covered his ears and shook his head. As tears rolled down his cheeks, he shouted, “Daddy, why? Why can't you just stay? Just love me?”

Though he could no longer see him, Colm heard his father say, “Whatever pain you feel, like the pain you are beginning to feel now as you leave me, you must understand it will all disappear someday, and no matter what—you will endure. Because you will never be alone. You have so many people who love you.
You'll see. You'll see.
” Colm nodded and tried to smile, the same angelic smile he had flashed the night he was born, the night his mother believed the angels stood beside him in their lonely hospital room.

Colm did not understand what was happening. He looked around everywhere for his father. “Don't leave me here alone!” He could not tell if it was all real or if it was a terribly frightening dream, one in which he could not believe or wake up from. Everything around him was turning black. He didn't know what to believe. What to think. Or whether thinking and believing were two altogether different notions. He heard voices shouting at him from every direction: Dr. Basu's, “It's like a dream, a trick of the brain. You're really not dead.” He heard his uncle's voice. “It's a chemical reaction.” He heard his mother's voice. “You have to believe. To hope. To know that there is always a chance, a way to fix you.” Then he heard her say, “
You're my miracle, Colm
.” Her voice seemed the most clear. The finest tuned. He heard her singing now and recognized the familiar song. He went toward the sound, and he cried out for her, “Mama! Mama? Are you there? I can't see you. Mama! Mama, I need you!”

Then Colm thought he could see them, his family—Dr. Basu, Sean, and his mother—all wrapped tightly around a small boy. And though they could not hear him or see him, Colm saw them and he knew . . .

He walked toward the trio and reached out and touched his mother's shoulder. At that moment Cathleen's heart filled, and the deep, hollow hole that had grown inside her sealed itself. She grabbed the boy she held in her arms and held him to her breast, while rocking and singing,
mo chuisle, mo chuisle
.

Colm let her love him, falling further into her body, loving her as he had never loved her before. She had found heaven before him, and she made it easier for him to find. All he had to do was make the trip. And it was all so beautiful. It was all proof. All the proof he ever needed.

Proof of heaven.

Then, like a sudden spark that arrives from a singular, unknown source, Colm opened his eyes and he saw.

He saw it all so clearly.

FROM
MARY
CURRAN
HACKETT
AND

This story began to unfold nearly thirty years ago. I was sitting at the kitchen table with my mother and my siblings, when my father, covered in soot from a fire he had fought the night before, walked into our kitchen and threw himself onto my mother. Her body almost collapsed under his weight, but somehow she mustered the strength to hold up all two hundred fifty pounds of him. His body convulsed as he told her that my uncle, Butch Melody, and my father's friend, Joey Halas, had been crushed when a floor of a burning warehouse collapsed on top of them. They died instantly.

I ran and hid in my parents' closet, clutching my father's church loafers and inhaling the faint scent of his pipe smoke and Vitalis. That morning, I prayed to God over and over:
Please don't take my dad.
From that moment on I realized two things: (1) In an instant, everything I knew could be gone, and (2) I was powerless to do anything about it. My parents were devout Catholics, who raised us with the belief that if you prayed to God, he would listen and that when we died, we would all go to heaven, where we would be together as a family and where God, the angels, and the communion of saints would be waiting for us.

My family life was bookended by these two realities: fire and God. On one end, we were held up by the Fire Department and the unique sort of family that came with it, and on the other, we had our church. We were Secular Franciscans, the type of family who said rosaries when we got in the car. We said Grace before meals, and prayers and novenas before bed. We stopped wherever we were when the sirens sounded and prayed for God's and St. Florian's protection for my father. We went to the stations of the cross together on Fridays during Lent, and to all of the High Mass services. My brothers were altar servers, and we girls sang in the choir. My mother taught our parish's first religious education classes from our kitchen table. For years, children streamed into our home, where my mom would tell detailed stories of Jesus's love and sacrifice for us. She dressed us in costumes, and we acted out the Nativity or the Crucifixion on the hearth in front of our fireplace. I believed my mother was the greatest storyteller who had ever lived, and I attribute my love for a good story to her and the Bible as much as I do to Laura Ingalls Wilder, Mark Twain, Harper Lee, Charles Dickens, and Louisa May Alcott.

We children were extreme in our devotion, too, but we were far more disgruntled. We hated that my parents always invited wayward guests, lost souls, lonely widows or widowers, introverted bachelors, and even priests to our house for dinner on Sundays and even precious holidays. My parents' idea of family literally included everyone they met. The kettle and the pot of coffee were always on, and my mother and father could be found holding court at any time of the day or night. (And to this day, in the evening, a bonfire burns at the end of our street, and around it you will find my parents and countless friends and family members circled round it, laughing, drinking, loving, and living the only way they know how.)

But throughout my childhood I had a secret and it was hard to keep. I wasn't so sure I believed it all. Throughout my childhood, I had never actually seen or experienced God in spite of all my piety. Like the character Colm in my story, I collapsed on a regular basis as a child (and never experienced the visions I had often heard people with near-death experiences had). I was what my family called “delicate” or “a fainter.” I was frequently short of breath, listless, weak, in incredible amounts of pain, and prone to unconsciousness. I missed school often, and at one point in the sixth grade, I was absent for more than a month while the rest of the family went on with work and school. As a teenager, I pushed myself by playing sports and even training for marathons because I didn't want anything or anyone to slow me down. But since my first collapse, which occurred more than twenty-five years ago, I have probably hit the floor nearly a hundred times. I have gone down on busy Metro platforms with subways ripping by within inches of my head, in museums surrounded by crowds of strangers, on sidewalks, and always it seemed, at the most inopportune moments.

One night in 2003, when I was twenty-six, my heart stopped beating while driving my daughter home from preschool, nearly killing us both. I remember the world going very quiet and still while looking at her for a brief second in the rearview mirror, and I knew there was nothing I could do before it all went black.

My father, who happened to be outside on that cold January day chopping wood, stepped out into the road because he heard a speeding car. As it came closer he saw my body slumped over the wheel, and the car accelerating as it barreled toward him. He leaped out of the way as my car crashed through a large, icy snowbank and came to a stop within a couple of feet of my parents' living room window. He ran immediately to my daughter and pulled her out of the vehicle. She was safe, thanks in part to the snowsuit that packed her so snugly into the car seat. I don't have any memory of any of the accident, but in the ambulance I remember my friend Nibby, an EMT fireman who knew my father, yelling at me to come back, screaming at me to stay with them.

I was met at the hospital by a police officer who had come to take away my license. As sick and confused as I was, I was more upset about losing my license than the accident. Without the ability to drive, I couldn't get to my job. I was a single mom at the time and had mountains of debt. I received no child support from my daughter's father, and I was living in my parents' basement while juggling a demanding career and side work. Losing my license was equivalent to financial suicide.

Shortly after, I moved to Cincinnati to be close to my boyfriend (now husband) and where I would have access to reliable public transportation and good hospitals. It was in one of those hospitals during a routine doctor's appointment that I flatlined again. When I woke up, there was a cluster of doctors and nurses standing over me—others rushed at me with needles and paddles and screamed at me to wake up. (I woke up spontaneously after almost two minutes of being asystole.) Later on, through the chaos, I found the calm, smiling face of an Indian doctor, who said, “There you are, my good girl.” Within days I had a pacemaker installed and a treatment plan for the rest of my life. I was eventually diagnosed with several related disorders all linked to a form of dysautonomia, which was explained to me as a condition in which the brain was at war with the heart and other parts of my body. It summed up my life perfectly in more ways than one. My brain and heart often wanted entirely different things.

I have since been diagnosed with malignant neurocardiogenic syncope disorder, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), and left atrial reentrant tachycardia. However, my conditions are well managed (I can even drive now), but I've been told they are incurable, so I do my best to take care of myself and my children.

This particular novel, however, first took root in me in 2006, when while bathing my son, I watched as he stopped breathing and began to die in my arms. He was sitting up one minute in the water and then suddenly he collapsed. He would have slammed his head on the tub had I not caught him in my arms. Within seconds, his face went ashy, his lips turned blue, and he stopped breathing and moving. It transformed me. I had never been on the other side of watching someone lose consciousness. To deal with my fear of losing my son to what I thought was my own condition, I began to write
Proof of Heaven
after I returned home from the hospital. (Colm's collapse was thought to be a possible epileptic attack or severe asthma attack. It was most likely the latter, since he has since suffered from several subsequent asthma attacks.)

That night a million thoughts raced through my head, but in the end all I could think was: What would I do? What would I do if I lost my son? How does any mother go on? Later that same night when I couldn't sleep, I sat staring at him and I had a vision (the closest I have ever come to a religious experience) that I knew I had to get on paper. The first chapter flowed out of me, but I left the file on my computer untouched. Meanwhile, I taught En-glish literature, acquired and edited several books for others, and continued to write all sorts of other stories and articles. One day while cleaning my computer, I accidentally found a file named PROOF, and as I was about to press Delete, for some reason, I started to read it. Cate, Dr. Basu, Sean, and Colm started to live and breathe inside my head; and they literally wouldn't let me sleep until I finished putting their story on paper. In writing this novel, I was able to see things clearly for the first time.

For me this story is really not about proving whether there is or isn't a heaven, or a God. I leave those questions for my readers to decide. What interests me are the questions we face in life and how we mere mortals deal with them. My wish is to understand the limitless capacity our hearts and minds have to embrace and understand love. It's about what makes a family a family, because many of us, like the characters in my book, craft our own version of a family.
Proof of Heaven
is also about sacrifice—we all make sacrifices every day for the people we love. And, ultimately, this story is a love story between a parent and a child—the unique sort of love that knows no bounds. It travels the world. It's bigger and shinier than the largest, most ornate cathedrals, both the ones built by man and the ones found in nature. It blossoms from the soul and expands and grows and eventually explodes—with an energy only equaled to the electricity and energy of the stars—and the human heart.