The Other Side of Heaven (3 page)

Three days after I had officially
stepped forward my life had become insane and busy. And I thought tax season
was bad, it paled in comparison to what I went through.

At least we had a plan of action.

Brad had opened up a special
email after my own had been bombarded. On the third day, the emails weren’t as
bad as the second. There was no way I could read them all, and sadly I didn’t.
However, they were read. Brad, Artie, her husband Walt, and a group of women
from Artie’s church read through the thousands of emails and forwarded to me
the ones they thought I needed to see.

Everyone felt the same way after
reading. Somber, sad, they were impossible to read out loud, because no matter
who tried, they got choked up.

“Listen to this one,” Artie would
say, then no sooner was she a sentence or two in, she could read no further.

After they forwarded me the ones
that really stood out, I would discuss and read them again with Brad.

The plan was to weed through
those and then after selecting some, I’d hit the road, traveling to meet each
person that was, in the best way I could describe, a candidate for the
experiment.

It was a contest, but one whose
winner would be tough to pick.

I knew the moment I read the
first letter, that my task was not going to be easy. His story, her story, it
didn’t matter who told it, it was the same. Laced with heartache and pain,
sadness and regret. Not ‘one’ person’s grief was greater than the next. It
would be a near impossible decision to make, to decide who was more deserving
of the opportunity. I wish it were something I could give to every single
person that contacted me, but it wasn’t.

Natalie, I am writing because
I would love the opportunity to see my aunt. She helped raise me and was like a
sister and my first friend. She was a wonderful woman who suffered horribly
from ALS. If I could just see her not in pain …

Dear Natalie, my brother was
only twenty-nine when he passed away. It was as if he didn’t have a fighting
chance. Our parents were alcoholics, he started drinking young and died of
cirrhosis. I just wish I could tell him I was sorry I wasn’t there more when he
was sick …

How do you choose? All the
letters were like that. Each one genuine.

Admittedly, my gut tugged at me
on some of the letters. A strange feeling hit while reading them. Something
pulled at me and told me, that ‘this could be the one or one of them’.

I wasn’t making progress in my
tiny apartment, despite all my help. It was time to go. The settlement checks
had cleared and financially I could leave.

Artie wanted to go with me, but I
felt it was unfair to her husband Walt and her children. Not only that, she was
an amazing nurse who was needed at the hospital. She would be a great help and
only a phone call or text away. She didn’t want me to travel alone.

Poor Brad.

I wondered if he were recruited
or if he really wanted to go. He was nineteen, just turned nineteen, actually.
Was off from school, young and handsome, the last thing I believe he wanted to
do was go on a road trip with me. Yet, he was there. He showed up with a bag
packed, went with me to get the RV. He was in for the long haul, he stated. He
wanted to see who would go.

A thousand letters read, and we
had a starting point.

I didn’t intend to travel with a
teenage boy, but I was glad he was with me. On the morning of day four, we had
our course mapped out. At least the first part.

We were on our way,

First stop.

Archer City, Texas.

Pastor Carl Higgins was a middle
aged man who exuded the youth of a twenty-something person. His gray hair was
striking, he had a great smile and he greeted us warmly when we arrived at his
church.

The First Baptist church was a
modern looking structure. Typically, when I thought church or Baptist, I
thought stone, cobble and steeple.

This church was beautiful in a
new way. Pastor Carl was one of seventy-five pastors who contacted us about
someone or persons in their congregation who would meet my needs. We made a
point that we would speak to these pastors.

It was a two day journey. After
leaving home, Brad and I spent the evening in a Kansas Campsite ground. It was
really nice not having the press. I relaxed, Brad worked hard reading and
sifting the emails. That was when Bill made a quick appearance. I hadn’t seen
him in days. He explained he was watching and was around. I would see him when
needed.

 When we arrived in Texas,
we set up camp outside of Archer before meeting with the pastor at our time of
six PM.

His wife had made a light dinner,
which I really appreciated. Both of them seemed genuinely happy to meet me and
Brad.

They, like the campsite manager
in Kansas, asked if Brad were my son. I suppose I was going to get that a lot.
I told them he was my helper.

“So I need to know. No one has
asked you publically,” said Pastor Carl. “Were you in heaven?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “I
went somewhere. I was greeted by many people who had died, then I was whisked
away by Bill and he said …”

“Bill?” Carl asked.

“He’s my heaven contact. He told
me of my mission and pops by every once and awhile.”

“Bill is his real name?”

I shook my head. “He told me to
call him that.”

“Is he an angel or …”

“I honestly don’t know.”

“What does he look like?”

“Bon Jovi in that ‘my hair is
short cause I want to be an actor’ phase.”

“A Heavenly figure that looks
like Bon Jovi.”

“Not the band, the man.”

“I … I get it.” Pastor Carl sat
back and lifted his cup of coffee. “When you went to this place with all the
souls, what was it like.”

“Bright, misty, warm. I felt
confused because I didn’t know anyone and they were all talking to me. Asking
me things. Requesting. I didn’t find out until after that they were wanting me
to pick their family member.”

“Maybe one of them will be here.”

I didn’t quite understand what he
meant.

“I asked you to join me because I
had a story for you to hear.”

I nodded. “Yes, someone that you
felt needed to have this chance. That’s why we are here.”

“It’s hard to choose, and I am
sure you will find out. But I apologize for my email being slightly dishonest.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t have one story, I have
many.”

I wondered if the good pastor
often did the same things with his Sunday sermons. Beat around the bush to
build suspense until he arrived at the point. That was what he was doing with
us. I knew there was a chance he had more than one persons story to share. So I
didn’t look at his contact email as being dishonest. However I learned he
wasn’t telling the stories, the people who lost would and they wouldn’t know I
was there if I didn’t want them to.

No, I had to be there. Knowing
the stories were just one part of my process. I needed to speak, hear, feel the
person. Hence why we hit the road.

Carl and his wife Cindy started
the grief support group at the church when they arrived in Archer three years
earlier. They ran one in their previous church, it all started when Cindy lost
a baby.

She was in her seventh month and
the grief was real.

“Of the four babies that I lost,
he was the face of my struggles. I knew his gender, we named him,” she said. “I
just couldn’t get over the loss. I joined a support group, but it wasn’t faith
based. So we started one. I’m not asking to be considered …” she grabbed my
hand as we sat in the circle of chair waiting for the others. “Just know, there
are many circumstances of loss that cause grief, deep grief that could be over
looked.”

“If you could take this chance.
What would it resolve? I asked.

“It would let me know that he was
okay. To see how he turned out or did he get a chance to be a baby again. Hold
him. Yeah … I would want to hold him.”

I watched her eyes gloss over and
I squeezed her hand. She was the first story of the day and it tugged at my
heart, I didn’t know if I was emotionally prepared to handle the first meeting.

Somewhere, somehow in the course
of my mission, I would become a better speaker. At least I hoped.

I was overwhelmed sitting in the
circle with those in the group. Every person there was experiencing something I
could not relate to. The deaths I had faced in my life, while they hurt,
somehow had an ending, a resolve.

Yet, several of these individuals
also had something else in common. Aside from loss, they swore they were there,
or almost … at the other side of heaven.

Alice had lost her father decades
before and struggled because she was the last one with him.

“I knew he was sick, he was very
sick. But I was there, I fed him, I wiped him down. He passed away hours
later,” she curled a tissue in her hand. “Was it me? Did I do something? Did I
not cut his food small enough. I blame myself for his death. If I only knew. If
I could hear him say to me, ‘It’s okay, I’m fine, you didn’t do this. It was my
time.’ I could accept it. I had a dream once, where my daughter was spinning in
circles with me and my father appeared. It felt real. He said to go back.”

“I didn’t get the go back
request, but I had the spinning,” Lydia said. She clutched a frame picture of a
young man, his hair dark, a little long and he wore a baseball cap. “My brother
was so full of life. He made everyone laugh, played practical jokes. Was the
protector. He died three months ago. He was fooling around with his handgun and
the safety malfunctioned. He died instantly. I had a dream he was in my
mother’s house. I walked in and he swung me around. He said he was fine. But it
was a dream. If I only knew. If I could hear him say he was fine.”

“I need to hear that. I need to
say thank you,” said another women, Gretchen. “I never thanked my grandmother
for all that she did, for raising me, the sacrifices. I wasn’t there at the
end, I let her down. I should have been there. I’ve dreamt of her. They always
feel like visits.”

“Me, too.” A man named Doug said.
“Dreams I mean. One stands out. I was lucid. I knew, you know, it was a dream,
yet my mother was before me. I could smell her, see the color of her eyes. I
heard this song playing that always reminded me of her. She said go back. It’s
not your time. I believed I was dead. I woke up having a hard time breathing.
You know to this day, I can’t listen to that song anymore without getting that
eerie feeling of my mother’s ghost.”

“Maybe it’s not eerie,” Pastor
Carl said. “Maybe it’s a connection and not listening to the song is ignoring
it.”

“No.” Doug shook his head. “I
think it’s a key. It opens a doorway and I’m not ready to go back there again.”

“Is that true?” Lydia asked me.
“Is there a key?”

And that was the first of the
questions. The rest of them came one right after another.

‘If we’re chosen. When would
we go?’

‘How would we get there?’

‘How long do we get to spend
with our loved one.’

‘Will it be a dream? Will they
know they’re dead?’

Question after question and not a
single one could I answer with certainty. I was promising these people a chance
at something and I had no idea how I was giving it to them. Sort of like having
a car giveaway, yet not knowing the type or when or where the car would come
from.

I felt defeated and like some
sort of con artist, misleading these people. Perhaps deceiving them for some
sort of sick pleasure. I wasn’t, but I didn’t have the answers they sought. At
the end of the meeting, after they poured their hearts out to me, they looked
at me with a lot less hope than when I first arrived.

Even the pastor was dismissive.

There was doubt, they didn’t need
to say it, I felt it.

Brad had stayed in the back, out
of sight during all the talk and urged me to speak when we left the church. I
didn’t.

I walked, silently, arms tight to
my body crying the entire way back to our RV.

Archer was an historic little
farm town that seemed to close down when the sun settled. Not that I was a big
drinker, but I wanted a drink and I stopped at the convenience store, grabbed a
bottle before arriving back to the RV.

I didn’t even get a glass.

Brad leaned against the
kitchenette counter. “Feel better. Take another chug.”

“You being sarcastic?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Not appreciated.” I took another
drink.

He reached above my head and
opened the cabinet, grabbing a glass. He set it before me. “At least be
hygienic in case you ever have a guest.”

I poured the liquor into the cup
and placed down the bottle. When I did, I closed my eyes. “I am out of my
league.’

“You just started this journey.”

“Am I crazy? Really? Am I? Maybe
I hit my head. Maybe I imagined it.”

“You were dead.”

“I still could have imagined the
whole Heaven thing.”

“You were dead for eighteen
hours,” Brad said. “What’s going on?”

“You saw how they looked at me in
the beginning and how differently they looked at me at the end.”

“Yeah, I did.” Brad nodded. “That
doesn’t mean anything.”

“I didn’t know what to tell
them.”

“No, you didn’t. But now you know
what to ask Bill the next time he pops by, right?”

I sniffled and took a drink.

“Did you expect this to be easy.
Go in listen to a few tales, tally up and make a decision.”

I raised my eyes to him.

“If you did, you were way off
base. It feels hard because you listened to painful stories, you empathized
with people’s heartache. It affected you. You wanted to help right there, at
least give answers, but you couldn’t.”

“So what do I do.”

“You keep listening. But the
second you can, you get answers. These people do deserve to know why they are
pouring their heart out.” He sat down across from me. “Natalie, this was the
first town. The first group of people you met. There are hurdles to every new
thing a person tries.”

I took a sip of my drink. ‘How
old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not convinced
you aren’t some old man in there. You’re very wise.”

“Thank you. I have strong roots.”
He tapped my hand. “Now … let’s take you out of the equation.”

“What do you mean?”

“As much as you are important,
the deliverer, the deciding factor, this isn’t about you. Put aside what you’re
feeling and answer me this. Did you hear anyone tonight that stood out? That
pulled at you. I mean really pulled.”

I paused before taking another
drink and the second he asked, someone did come to mind. “Yes. Yes I did.”

“Good.” Brad smiled. “I did too.”