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But all endings are also beginnings.
heaven is always thinking about us.
If you knew you were about to die, how would you spend your final hours?
Annie was happy at first. But as the wedding approached, she grew anxious. She began losing sleep. “Whenever I plan things, they don’t work out,” she told Paulo. He put his arm around her shoulders and reminded her that she didn’t “plan” to bump into him that day at the hospital, right?
But Annie, only eight years old, remembered nothing. The shock of the events wiped her memory clean, like a flame extinguished by a strong wind.
The doctors used words like conscious repression and traumatic disorder, not knowing that certain memories are for this world and certain ones only come through in the next.
heaven is always watching.
“Be good. Be careful. Be happy.” “Can’t do all three,” Paulo said. Dennis laughed. “Then just be happy.”
“I’m married.” He tapped her head lightly. “A new life, kid.”
No story sits by itself. Our lives connect like threads on a loom, interwoven in ways we never realize.
The tale of your life is written second by second, as shifting as the flip of a pencil to an eraser.
There are touches in your life that identify the person making contact, even if your eyes are closed.
They’d made it. They were married.
At certain moments, when death is close, the veils pull back between this world and the next. Heaven and earth overlay. When they do, it is possible to glimpse certain souls already departed. You can see them awaiting your arrival. And they can see you coming.
northern lights.
“Particles fly off the sun and blow to earth. They take two days to reach us. They break into our atmosphere where it’s most vulnerable, at—”
“The top of the world,”
Finally. A partner to be proud of.
“We can start our marriage with an act of kindness,” she said.
Do you know what causes wind? High pressure meeting low pressure. Warm meeting cold. Change. Change causes wind. And the bigger the change, the stronger the wind blows. Life is much the same. One change blows in another.
In the middle of a big crisis, a small belief can be your salvation.
danger has no grip in the afterlife,
“Nobody can talk when they first arrive,” the boy said. “It makes you listen better.
A person who makes mistakes. “Wow,” the boy said, rolling his eyes. “Someone has self-esteem issues.”
They teach you something you didn’t realize while you were alive. It helps you understand the things you went through.”
“You work your way along in heaven.”
“If this is really heaven,” she asked, “why are you the person greeting me? Aren’t I supposed to see God? Or Jesus? Or at least someone I remember?” “That comes in time,”
“We forget that ‘our’ time is linked to others’ times. We come from one. We return to one. That’s how a connected universe makes sense.”
hundreds of years ago, they used plaster and tape to reattach noses? Later they used wine and urine to preserve severed fingers. Reattaching rabbits’ ears preceded efforts on humans. And not long before I was born, Chinese doctors trying replantation were still using needles that took two days to grind down.
“People lament that if their loved ones had been born fifty years later, they might have survived what killed them. But perhaps what killed them is what led someone to find a cure.
When we build, we build on the shoulders of those who came before us. And when we fall apart, those who came before us help put us back together.”
For the first time in heaven, she felt pain. “It won’t hurt long,” Sameer said. “Just a reminder.” “Of my loss?” she asked. “Of your attachment,” he replied.
A choking loneliness began to rise. Annie had felt this way often in the years after the accident, isolated, cast out, unable to do things. But why feel it here? Wasn’t heaven supposed to be the end of such pain?
Over the centuries, man has created countless depictions of the hereafter; few, if any, show the departed soul alone. Despite the ways we isolate ourselves on earth, in our final bliss, we are always with someone: the Lord, Jesus, saints, angels, loved ones. A solitary afterlife seems unimaginably grim.
At night, Annie heard her mother crying in her bedroom. It made Annie angry. I’m the one who got hurt, she thought.
This was the start of a silent resentment. It made Annie feel more alone, which only increased her bitterness. The more Lorraine cried, the less Annie could think of to say to her.
Her mother stopped. Her face seemed to crumble. She bit her lip and blinked back tears. “What’s the matter, Mommy?” Annie asked. “You’re smiling,” her mother said.
“Am I here to make amends?” “Amends?” “For my mistake. Whatever it was.” “Why do you assume it was a mistake?” Annie didn’t say what she was thinking: that her whole life, she’d been making mistakes.
“Did you know,” the old woman said now, standing beside the grown-up Annie, “that a dog will go to a crying human before a smiling one? Dogs get sad when people around them get sad. They’re created that way. It’s called empathy.
“Humans have it, too. But it gets blocked by other things—ego, self-pity, thinking your own pain must be tended to first. Dogs don’t have those issues.”
“Not your words. But your intent. Dogs hear differently than humans; we detect emotion in your voices. Anger, fear, lightness, heaviness—I could tell those from your sound. I could smell your day on your skin. What you ate. When you’d showered.
“Loneliness, Annie. That’s what I am here to explain. You suffered it. You tortured yourself over it. But you never understood it.”
“What’s to understand about being lonely?” Annie snapped. “It’s terrible.” “Not always. Do you think, if you hadn’t felt so lonely, you would have chosen me at the shelter? Or taken off my collar to let me eat that first morning? Your loneliness gave me a home. And happiness.
“Have you ever considered how many living things there are on earth?” Cleo asked. “People. Animals. Birds. Fish. Trees. It makes you wonder how anyone could feel lonely. Yet humans do. It’s a shame.”
“We fear loneliness, Annie, but loneliness itself does not exist. It has no form. It is merely a shadow that falls over us. And just as shadows die when light changes, that sad feeling can depart once we see the truth.” “What’s the truth?” Annie asked. “That the end of loneliness is when someone needs you.” The old woman smiled. “And the world is so full of need.”
“No act done for someone else is ever wasted.”
“My arms,” Annie marveled. “They’re back.” “To hold what you love,” Cleo whispered.
maybe reunion was heaven-sent.
Children begin by needing their parents. Over time, they reject them. Eventually, they become them.
But, like many children, she never knew the backstory of her mother’s sacrifice.
