September 2003: TJ's Visit
I cried, sobbing my sister’s name over and over as I showered, sensing Mary’s pain across the width of a continent. It had been four weeks now and her pain had not lessened. In fact, it had gotten worse as shock wore off and reality set it. Her son was not coming home. The accident that had taken TJ's life was all too real. I could feel her desire to die, to end her life and the sorrow she knew would last forever. And I wept because there wasn't anything I could do to help her.
"She'll be all right." The voice was loud, loud enough to be heard over my sobs as I showered.
"How stupid! How could anyone be all right after losing their child?" I demanded of myself, of no one, of anyone, of God. I rested my head against the shower wall, feeling the helplessness and sorrow engulf me. How, in God’s name, would my sister survive the loss of her only child? I wondered.
"But she will, Karen.'
The voice came out of nowhere and out of everywhere. Not my voice, not my imagination, but a firm and loving assurance that everything would be fine. It spoke with such compassion and belief the words slipped through my heartache, my grief and my doubts, leaving such peace in its wake I had to grab the shower handrail to keep from falling. Suddenly and without doubt, I realized I was talking to God in the shower. God was talking to me. And finally, yes finally, after fifty years, I was ready to listen. I desperately wanted to believe.
Days passed and of course I began to doubt what had really happened. Delusion? Hallucination? Grief blowing my mind? Because really, why would God talk to me? I mean talk to me in a way I really heard him. It's not that I don't believe in God, because I do. I was taught about God in church, raised in the Catholic religion. But I'm not anyone special. I’m far from perfect. I’ve probably made enough mistakes in my fifty plus years to see me burning in hell. I'd been married and divorced more than once. I'm a mother of three, grandmother to six, and great-grandmother to one. With that jumble I have had my share of experiences and hardships to work through. So far, I haven't been able to give up smoking. I drink too much soda and eat too many sweets. I've known my fair share of alcoholics and substance abusers, am even related to a few. I’ve quit jobs and I’ve been fired. I’ve filed bankruptcy. I’ve been nasty, harsh, and unforgiving to many. Like I said, far from perfect.
So why, I asked with no small amount of wonder, why would God talk to me?
Days passed and I managed to convince myself that my talking to God in the shower was all just a dream. My sister was still suffering and there still wasn’t anything I could do to help her.
I was crying again, or maybe still, after I’d gotten off the phone with my sister. When Mary told me she’d put clean sheets on TJ’s bed, just in case he came home, my heart squeezed in my chest and I bemoaned the distance between us. I didn’t want to be two thousand miles away while she cried. I wanted to be close enough to hold her while she cursed God and the Heavens, demanding to know what she and Rick had done to deserve the loss of their only child. But I wasn’t there so I cried. I cried because I wasn’t there to hold her, and I cried because I didn’t have any answers. And as I gazed at a picture of TJ and his young daughter, Alyssa, I cried for myself, begging him to forgive me for not being a better aunt, for not being around more, for not calling enough, for not knowing how to help his parents now that he was gone.
I never expected an answer.
“It’s ok, Aunt Karen.”
It was TJ’s voice and it was close, as if he were sitting next to me, whispering in my ear. I heard but I didn’t believe.
“Ok?" I snarled. It was just a stupid voice in my head, right? Just my imagination that he was here and close. “Haven’t you heard?" I screamed as if he could really hear me. "You are dead and your mother is devastated. Dead, do you hear me?”
Without a doubt, I was losing my mind!
He chuckled. I actually heard his chuckle, and suddenly remembered taking him to an amusement park when he was just a child and hearing the same chuckle, remembered seeing his smile when he told me he was so happy his feet were laughing. Remembered as clear as if it were happening now.
“Mom won’t understand I’m ok," TJ said clearly in this weird space of time I had entered. "She won’t understand it was just my time to go, Aunt Karen.”
He sounded so real. He sounded so here. Though I didn’t understand what was happening, couldn’t believe I was having a conversation with my dead nephew, I still answered. “Damn it, neither do I understand! I do not understand why God has taken you! I do not understand why you had to die in that horrible accident! You were only twenty-three! “
It was weird. It was strange. The sane part of my brain registered I was yelling at my nephew TJ, my very very dead nephew. It was unreal. I cried harder. If this is how grief was affecting me, my sister hadn’t a hope of surviving her sorrow.
“It’s really ok, Aunt Karen,” he insisted. “Really. I’m fine. I'm happy.”
TJ’s voice was soft and sweet, whispering through my mind and into my heart. Though I couldn't see him, I felt a glow of love around him so intense I felt it was true. He was fine. He was happy.
I so wanted to believe.
Suddenly my world shifted, and I was outside of my body, up high, near the stars, looking down at the earth with TJ by my side. And my heart understood the truth. I was having a conversation with my nephew, talking with him after he’d crossed over into Heaven. The realization that we, our Spirit, did not die with our physical body but crossed to the Other Side and into a wonderful life full of love and compassion. It was sudden and brief, a miniscule moment in time, forever etched in my soul and my mind.
That awareness changed my life. That sudden, that abrupt. One moment I was not knowing, the next I knew.
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