To Heaven and Back (19 page)

In writing this book, I allowed myself to fully embrace the spiritual experiences I had during my accident and its aftermath: reliving the details and immersing myself in the physical, emotional, and spiritual reality of that time. In doing so, I was freshly filled with the remembrance and acknowledgement of God’s continuing and active presence in my life, His absolute grace, His pure love, and His promises for the future. I was, again, filled with the joy of His spirit and the knowledge that every event is a part of a larger and more beautiful tapestry.

Revisiting and re-experiencing these emotions and memories gave me the ability to be the physical, emotional, and spiritual rock of support that proved to be so essential for my family and my community after Willie’s death. Perhaps if I had written this book several years earlier, I would not have so clearly remembered the words spoken to me by the angels or the many reasons for returning me to earth.

Bill and I were surprised to find that a predominant emotion during the first year was fear. Fear that we would never emerge from the emotional fog. Fear that we would never again be able to experience joy. Fear that we would fail our remaining children. Fear that we would forget. I think
much of the fear and anxiety we felt was just fear of an unknown future that would not include the son that we loved so dearly. Someone told me, “When you love with all that you have, you grieve with all that you are,” and I would certainly agree with this observation.

I did believe that God, if asked, would not only carry us, but also would protect our souls during this emotionally vulnerable time. Regardless, it was difficult for my husband to eradicate his feeling not just of sadness and fear, but of despair.

I am an avid skier and eight months after Willie’s death, my son Eliot and I were skiing in the back-country. This form of skiing involves placing synthetic animal skins on the bottom of one’s skis, making it possible to climb up snowy mountainous terrain that is otherwise inaccessible. Upon reaching the summit, the skins are removed from the skis and the thrill of then skiing downhill, usually in fresh powdery snow, makes all of the uphill effort worthwhile. I love to amuse my kids, so at the end of the afternoon I was showing-off for Eliot, who was videotaping my skiing. I decided to ski over a gulley and try to “catch air”—not something I do well, but always something that makes Eliot and my other kids laugh. Rather than catching
air, however, my skis twisted in different directions and I broke my ankle. At least Eliot was able to memorialize this with his video footage!

At this point my options were quite limited. I couldn’t ski and Eliot couldn’t carry me. We considered using our skis to make a sled but had to climb up a significant hill, so didn’t think that was likely to be effective. I was already cold and I knew it would take at least several more hours for Eliot to ski out, contact the Search & Rescue team, and for them to return. I decided my only reasonable option was to tighten my ski boot (adding some stability to my ankle) and fortify myself for a slow, very painful hike/ski out of the back country. I used my ski poles and my good leg to carry me up and across the slopes, while hopelessly trying to let my injured one gently dangle. This journey back to our car took a couple of hours and was accompanied by a lifetime’s worth of cursing. As an interesting side note, I had recently read a study by Stephens, Atkins, and Kingston in which they evaluated swearing as a response to pain (
NeuroReport
, August 5, 2009; volume 20, issue 12; 1056–60). In the study, two sets of data were collected based on how long volunteers were able to keep their arm submersed in ice water, a known pain stimulator, while either a commonplace word to describe a table or shouting the profanity of their choice. The authors found that volunteers had a significantly greater pain tolerance when using their profanity of choice. As I hiked the distance to our car, I performed my own personal experiment. I tried
yelling words like “snow” and “tree” or yelling different profanities. In the end, I agreed wholeheartedly with the results of Stephens’ study.

I had surgery that evening to repair my ankle and remained in the hospital overnight. A Rwandan priest named Father Ubald “just happened” to be visiting a friend in Jackson Hole at that time, and she brought him to the hospital to pray with me. To understand who Father Ubald is and what he represents, you must understand a little about his history.

The origins of the 1994 Rwandan genocide are complex and the ethnic divisions in Rwanda between the Hutus and Tutsis are longstanding. Tribal polarization exploded after the assassination of President Juvénal Habyarimana, who was a Hutu, and in a period of one hundred days, more than 800,000 people were systematically and violently murdered.

In the midst of this killing, Father Ubald, a Catholic priest whose Tutsi father had been murdered in the 1962 overthrow of the Rwandan government and who had been himself threatened by fellow seminarians in the 1980s, was forced to flee first to his bishop’s residence and then to the Congo in return for a promise by the Hutus not to harm the people of his parish. As soon as he left, the Hutu members of his large parish betrayed this promise and brutally hacked to death approximately 45,000 Tutsi members of his parish. More
than 80 members of his immediate and extended family, including his mother, were exterminated within the first two weeks of the massacre.

Before fleeing, Father Ubald promised his bishop that he would return to bring healing to his people. The massacre finally ended when the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) regained power, but grief-stricken survivors were left bewildered by the intensity of the evil that had been unleashed in their country. Survivors of all ethnic groups experienced profound guilt: guilt for killing, guilt for surviving, guilt for not doing enough to prevent or mitigate the conflicts. Many sought revenge, but as has been said, “There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.”

Father Ubald spent many months in prayer and his tears filled a river before he made his way to Lourdes, France. It was there, as he meditated on the Stations of the Cross, that he heard God tell him to release his sorrows and “pick up his cross.” God filled his heart with a forgiveness that can only come from God. Subsequently, he met with and forgave the mayor of his town, who was the man who ordered the murder of Father Ubald’s own mother. Father Ubald took responsibility for that man’s children, treating them as his own and even paying for their schooling.

Father Ubald is a man who radiates the purity of God’s grace and preaches on forgiveness and reconciliation. He also holds healing masses, using
his gifts to heal and renew others. He performs healing masses in Rwanda, Europe, and the United States. He is building a center in Rwanda, called The Secret of Peace, which will minister to the people of Rwanda and the surrounding areas of the Congo and Burundi, countries that have seen so much war, poverty, and trauma. He works tirelessly toward the goal of forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace for the people of Rwanda and throughout the world.

It was because of his background and experience in healing, that my friend, Katsey, brought him to my hospital room to pray over my ankle. When they arrived, I was so ill from the anesthetics and the pain medications that they quickly left. The following day, Father Ubald insisted that I visit him at Katsey’s house once I was feeling better. I arranged a visit a few days later, and I brought Bill with me.

We chatted briefly, but then Father Ubald immediately focused on Bill. Together they prayed for more than an hour. I wanted to cry at the beauty of this, as I have never seen Bill be outwardly spiritual and this was an answer to many years of my prayers. The following week, Father Ubald had dinner in our home and the conversation turned to the topic of loss. Knowing his history of loss and grief makes listening to his thoughts quite compelling and powerful, so we were riveted as he described his own and his country’s experiences with loss and the ongoing process of grief and forgiveness. He
believes that the complex emotions related to loss almost always include some sort of anger or rage, guilt or shame that requires forgiveness before true healing, acceptance, and reconciliation can occur. Father Ubald also noted that forgiveness does not need to be two-sided. It comes from within a person and does not require the involvement, acknowledgment, or acceptance of the other.

As we discussed the many facets of forgiveness, I began to recognize that although I really did believe Willie’s death was part of God’s larger plan, I felt anger, and perhaps rage, in the core of my sadness. I was angry that Erik had been so careless in his driving that he killed my beautiful son. I was angry that he never contacted us afterwards to express remorse or sorrow, and angry that, according to some reports I’d heard, he was continuing to be what I termed a “dead-ender”; someone without much going on in his life, few goals, and no passion to make a difference in the world or even in himself. I was angry that he stole my son’s life, yet seemed not to be making the most of his own opportunity for a full life. I knew I needed to forgive him and pray for his future.

I was also angry with myself and felt a sense of shame and guilt. The week before Willie’s death, I had been visiting schools in Vermont with my daughter and although I could have made it work, I decided not to spend the extra time and money
to combine this trip with a trip to Maine to visit my sons at the ski training facility. This was one of my very few regrets with regard to Willie’s life and death, and it haunted me a little bit. I knew I needed to forgive myself.

I was also haunted by a feeling that I had failed in my responsibility to God. I knew that one of the reasons for my being sent back to earth after my boating accident was to help support my family and, more specifically, help my husband deal with the death of our son. I was also meant to help them discover their relationship with God. I had tried my best, but in February 2010, I didn’t think any of them were closer to God and Bill was still filled with a pervasive sense of despair. I felt empty and defeated. I was incapable of helping him, my kids, or myself.

As I listened to Father Ubald speak, I contemplated his loving and joyful manner. It then suddenly occurred to me that my sense of failure was self-inflicted and egocentric. I had stopped looking to God for help, believing that I was expected to do it all on my own. Believing that I
could
do it all on my own. In the process, I had let doubts, fear, and guilt silently creep in and take over my thoughts. I was still in the valley of the shadow of death and the door of my heart was propped wide open. Right then and there, I asked God for help and immediately felt forgiven and free, knowing that God was in control. I prayed for guidance,
requesting that God would help our family move forward in the process of grieving, and prayed that Bill would begin to see a glimmer of hope for the future. Once again, I would say that God answered my prayers, though definitely not in the way I had imagined.

In our conversation on loss and forgiveness, Father Ubald identified Bill’s sense of despair and, I think, my sense of failure. He noted that while sadness reflects love, despair reflects the destruction of the soul that often accompanies grief. He then got up from the table, filled a bowl with water, blessed the water, and proceeded to move throughout our home sprinkling this holy water on everything he saw … actually,
pouring handfuls of water
would be a more accurate description. He spread holy water in every area of every room, in every closet, and on every object and every surface … on everything everywhere. As he did so, he commanded that the evil of despair leave our home and leave our family.

I have never been a Catholic, so I am not sure what to think about holy water, but I do know one thing: Our lives changed after Father Ubald’s visit. We still felt the sadness of loss, but the sense of fear and despair that had been slowly destroying our lives departed that evening.

Is it just “coincidental” that I broke my ankle at the time Father Ubald was visiting, or that I was too ill to speak with him in the hospital, thereby providing
the opportunity for Father Ubald to bring healing to me, to Bill, and to our family? Perhaps it is, but I think it is more likely another example of God’s perfectly and choreographed sequence of events.