The Afterlife of Billy Fingers: How My Bad-Boy Brother Proved to Me There's Life After Death (12 page)

Had Billy changed Steve's destiny?

As a cosmic detective, I was determined to find answers. But how? Each day, as the autumn advanced, Billy hovered peacefully, invisibly, silently, at a respectful distance.

Hoping for inspiration, I waited for the full moon. Seated on my meditation cushion at midnight with the scent of jasmine candles wafting around me, I wrote my questions on a notepad. It was a relief to get them out of my head and onto paper. I closed my eyes and went to where there was no thought, no space, no time.

When I blinked my eyes open an hour later, instead of answers I scribbled down the core of my inquiry:
Can the other side intervene in our lives?

The following evening, an indigo blue October night, Billy's light rose high above me like an angel.

Annie, Annie, wake up.

Haven't I proved to you, my sister, that I am real? And much more important than the fact that I am real is that there are other places—places other than earth—that are real, full of light and love and bliss. And maybe, just maybe some light can come from those places to make life on your planet a little better, a little kinder, a little more musical.

I have a visitor with me tonight. Can you see the aura of golden blue light in the corner of the room? He's Pat, a very strong and noble spirit.

Does he remind you of Tex? He should, because he's her older brother. As you know, Pat was killed when Tex was just a teenager, killed what you would call tragically, in a plane crash, on his way home for a Thanksgiving visit.

Well, Pat is kind of Tex's guardian now. Tex's mother and Patty Malone and all those on this side of things who love Tex would like me to send her a letter, so please write this down.

Dear Tex
,

Just because you're exhausted from your mom's illness and her death, you don't have to destroy yourself. Destroying yourself with alcohol isn't the greatest way to handle hard times.

I know you like the idea of fate. Well, maybe your fate is to become bigger than your addictions. Maybe this is the defining moment of your spirit. Maybe you want to stick around awhile without your body nagging at you saying, “I'm a mess.”

It was really fun for me! No teeth, bloated, hair falling out, my knees killing me, coughing up blood. Oh, you can get away with it for a certain amount of time, but then there's the piper to pay.

You're giving yourself the silent treatment, just like you want to give everyone the silent treatment when it comes to this very tender subject. So I'll give it to you tender.

You're going to have to cut this out before your body starts screaming at you for attention.

Let's just start with one tiny baby step. Start to develop an awareness of what you're doing. No judgment. No false commitments. Just start letting what you're doing enter into your consciousness.

Billy

I was able to see the blue ball of light that Billy identified as Tex's brother floating in the corner of my room. I didn't understand, though, why Billy called him Patty Malone. Tex's deceased brother was named Pat, but their family name isn't Malone.

Later that morning, I called Tex.

“Billy came to me in the middle of the night and brought your brother Pat with him.”

“Really?”

“And Billy gave me a letter for you. It's from Billy and Pat and all the people on the other side who love you.”

“Oh my God.”

“For some reason Billy mentioned the name Patty Malone. But that's an Irish name and your family's French, right?”

“Here we are again,” Tex laughed. “Billy's doing it again. Malone isn't my name but my mother was Irish— she was a Malone. And her father, who was, of course, my grandfather, his name was Patty Malone. So the letter must be from my brother Pat and also my grandfather. This is amazing! E-mail me the letter right now.”

I was hesitant. Tex almost always had a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, but I'd never seen her drunk. I was sure that the subject of her drinking was off limits, but I forged ahead.

“Listen, Tex. I have to tell you, the letter's about your drinking.”

Tex was silent. I could feel the frost from the other end of the phone.

It was definitely time to hang up; I did, however, e-mail her Billy's letter.

I hoped it wouldn't end our friendship.

F
inally, right before Thanksgiving, the UPS man brought me the beat-up cardboard box that contained Billy's possessions. It had been sitting in the Mercedes dealer's showroom since Billy's death ten months ago. Billy had been living out of his old Mercedes until he totaled it the week before his death. Everything he'd had in that car was now inside the 10-by-19-by-13-inch tattered cardboard box with the words “Don't touch” scrawled across it in black magic marker.

I put the box next to the fireplace, just below Billy's ashes. I wasn't ready to open it. It reminded me of the old Billy, the one who got high, who had to live out of his car, who crashed it into a tree, who could have killed someone. Still, I was curious. What was in the box that the new Billy wanted me to have?

On Thanksgiving morning . . .

Why not open the box on Christmas? It's just a month away. You'll wake up to a gorgeous snow and it will be my gift.

When I talk to you, you hear the same voice speaking in the same language you've always heard. I use my
Billy voice for your benefit, Princess. We don't use words where I am. Joseph and I use telepathy to hear each other's thoughts. They aren't thoughts, really. They are much more wonderful than thoughts. These better-thanthoughts are like symphonies so gorgeous you cannot even imagine them.

On earth, people say things for a lot of reasons. Sometimes they mean what they say, sometimes they don't. There is no pretense or falseness here. There is no competitiveness or resentment. Here, our telepathic communications fill each other with beauty.

Speaking of telepathy, I know you've sometimes wondered if there's any music here. There are so many clichés about angels singing and harps playing, and you're curious if any of these ideas are true. Well, once again I can only speak for myself. There aren't exactly any of those things where I am. Here the atmosphere is filled with a soft, ambient sound. I haven't been analyzing, just enjoying, but I'll do a little analyzing for you.

There's a constant background haze that reminds me of earth's natural sounds, like wind or rain or ocean waves. It's more musical than that though, so I'm pretty sure it's created by instruments of some kind. The sounds resemble soft dreamy-type violins and cellos, flutes and horns and harps. There's also rhythm here, but it isn't steady. It's a pulsation that's constantly changing.

Recently, I began to notice that sometimes this haze bursts into a little melody and then that melody quickly disappears. This melody phenomenon is happening more
and more, and I really can't say if it's the sound that's changed, or my ability to hear it.

By the way, if you could tune in, you'd hear these cosmic sounds right where you are now, because they exist everywhere. You can't hear them with your regular ears, though—just your spiritual ones. Even if your regular ears could hear the music, they're too busy listening to a hundred million other things to listen to these sounds. Your inner spiritual ears could hear them, but they're also preoccupied listening to a hundred million different thoughts.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but in this case instead of a picture I offer you an iTunes file. Certain music written by the composer Sibelius gives you an idea of what the cosmic sound is like. Sibelius was definitely tuned to a higher dimension. I'm not talking about his darker pieces, but download his swan music and notice how the swells of sound break into melodies. This will give you a hint of what I hear, except what I hear is infinitely lighter and more sublime.

And sometimes, baby sister, once in a while, I hear a voice, a distant feminine voice singing in some language I've never heard and don't understand. This voice has the allure of what I imagine is a siren's song, but the voice couldn't belong to a so-called siren because they lure men to their deaths and as you know I died some time ago
[laughs].
This singing is so intoxicating that when I hear it I want more. I'm not used to wanting anything, but I promise you no one could resist longing for this voice.

Swan music? Sibelius? I'd heard of the composer but knew nothing about his music.

I went to iTunes, typed in “Sibelius,” found a piece called
The Swan of Tuonela
, and downloaded the file. Melodies flowed in and out of a soft ambient haze of sound like the celestial music Billy had described.

As it turns out,
The Swan of Tuonela
is a Finnish legend. The sacred white swan swims in the dark mystical Tuonela River that separates this world from the next. It was the same role Billy had assigned me, navigating the waters between dimensions.

I e-mailed the music to Guru Guy along with Billy's notes. He sent me back an article about Sibelius that had appeared in the
New Yorker
magazine honoring the fiftieth anniversary of the composer's death.

The article said that Sibelius believed some of his music came from a Divine source. It also revealed that Sibelius had been an alcoholic. Perhaps Sibelius’ addiction had been an essential part of who he was, just like Billy. Would he have been the same genius without it? Who can say it should have been some other way—for either of them?

A
Billy had promised, it did snow on Christmas. I started a fire, and with it, the Billy effect brightened the room.

Merry Christmas, Annie. The key you'll find in the box is a symbol of the keys to life I help you uncover. Did I ever tell you what a lovely home you have? I didn't have a home at the end. Home, as they say, is where the heart is.

The first thing I pulled from the box was an empty dented blue canister with the word “Home” and a swan painted on it. Sibelius's Swan of Tuonela?

Next came a spyglass.

In honor of your role as the Sherlock Holmes of the world beyond
, Billy joked.

The box contained framed pictures and photo albums from Billy's life, pre-Venezuela. There were also several envelopes filled with photographs of him in Margarita; Billy with different women, Billy in the water, Billy on the beach, smiling and having fun.

Things don't look like they were so bad for me, do they? I was sometimes having a pretty good time there in Margarita. Not so serious, right?

We were looking over things together, discussing them. Even though Billy was somewhere across the Universe, he was also in the room with me.

There were CDs and some books: Philip Roth's
Sabbath's Theater, The Language of the Heart
by Bill W, the founder of AA, and
Living Each Day
by Rabbi Twerski. Underneath the books were four beat-up old spiral notebooks. They were Billy's journals.

“You kept a journal? Can I read them?”

I gave them to you, didn't I?

At the bottom of the Billy Box, hiding in a corner, was a pink quartz heart, a mother-of-pearl pillbox, the key that Billy said would be there, and two Alcoholics Anonymous coins.

The gold coin was from White Deer Run. My best rehab experience. Stayed straight for eight years after that.

The other coin was silver. It had a cross on it and read, “
But for the grace of God
.”

My mantra when I was alive.

As I was looking though Billy's things, Tex called.

“Annie. I think I'm going to Arizona for a month. Sometime in January.”

“That's a nice long vacation.”

“It's not actually a vacation. I'm playing with the idea of going to rehab.”

I was surprised; Tex had never even hinted to me that she thought she had a problem. Months ago, when I'd told her what Billy's letter was about, she'd turned into an icicle. I hadn't said another word to her about it.

“What do you think, Annie? Is it a good idea?”

“A great idea.”

I put the key, the heart, the pillbox, and the two AA coins in the drawer of my night table. I kept the journals in a basket by my living room couch. Like the box they came in, they reminded me of the old Billy, and I was afraid to read them. After a week, I picked a journal with a purple cover and opened it at random. It read:

“As the garden grows inside you, water the flowers and don't forget that the sand of the spiritual work is only the sand in the oyster that makes a pearl. It's the irritant that makes the pearl.”

No way! How could this be? I read on.

“I thank you for this beautiful life you have given me with all the speed bumps, with all the sand. I am getting ready to write my book soon.”

Sand? Irritant? Pearl? Book? This isn't possible.

Slowly, over the next month, I deciphered Billy's almost illegible handwriting. I read about his struggles, his darker moments, his aspirations, and his intimacy with God:

“I want desperately to get better, but that is actually second for me. God is first because no human alone could have gotten me out of Venezuela and helped me get well again. All of the good, all of this, was God's doing. I love you, God. Keep being there, please.”

* * *

“I would like to be a guide and help others polish their mirror to reflect their lives better. Use a
few beautiful words that can play through their lives, hold them in God's love, and help them feel better in difficulty. I may be an addict but I am also sensitive, caring, intuitive, intelligent, and wise. Show me how to take these ideas into the world.”

* * *

“This is how I will help. I will be an author and write a book. The book won't be of an intellectual nature because life and its fulfillment are spiritual. Also, I want to bring laughter into the world. In my book I will only say things to help, not to sell people something that may or may not be true. My book will get done. I will do it. It's in your hands, God. Love, Billy.”