CHAPTER 35
Pauline
I had no idea the gap between earth and heaven is narrow, no wider than a jump over a brook. I’d always thought heaven was so far from the living, no one could measure its distance from earth. Even the wisest person ever born couldn’t look up at the night sky through the most powerful telescope and catch a glimpse of heaven—it was that far off.
That was the only part of knowing there is a heaven that used to frighten me—how far away it was. And when Henry died, that was what pained me the most. I was his mother and he was just a baby and how could heaven be Paradise for him if I was so far away no mortal could gauge the distance that separated us?
This is why Death stayed with me after Henry left. Not to haunt or accuse or disturb me, but because I was always meant to follow my little boy. Death knew that in just a short time, I would cross over, just like Henry did, and so it has been hovering, gentle and benevolent, waiting for me. All this time my companion has been trying to show me that the space between the two worlds is not so vast. Heaven is just on the other side of waking.
Death is not our foe. There is no foe. There is only the stunningly fragile human body, a holy creation capable of loving with such astonishing strength but which is weak to the curses of a fallen world. It is the frailty of flesh and blood that causes us to succumb to forces greater than ourselves. We are like butterflies, delicate and wonderful, here on earth for only a brilliant moment and then away we fly. Death is appointed merely to close the door to our suffering and open wide the gate to Paradise. If we were made of stone or iron, we would be impervious to disease and injury and disaster, but then we could not give love and receive love, could we? We’d be unable to feel anything at all, and surely incapable of spreading our wings and flying....
Henry is near to me now. I can feel the canopy lifting, and I am not afraid. If I were orchestrating the events, I would have us all be together at this moment I join my baby boy. But I shall fly ahead of Thomas and the girls, just as Henry did, and I know with all my heart that we shall all be together again. Perhaps on that fine day it will even seem that we’ve drifted heavenward only moments apart from one another, not years or decades....
Oh, Thomas!
I see you there at my bedside, holding my hand, saying my name. The army let you come home to me! How I’ve missed you. I wish I could tell you how much, but I am strangely not inside that shell of a woman whose hand you are holding. I am right beside you, leaning in close. Can you feel my arms around you? Can you hear me? I am going to our precious Henry. Don’t weep. You and I had a happy life. We had seventeen good years. Some people never see seventeen days of the same measure of happiness. I don’t think my parents were ever as happy as we were. Don’t hate them now, my darling, for stopping us from going home. They did what they thought they had to.
The girls will be all right, Thomas. I know you are already worried for them, but Willa has Evelyn, Maggie has Alex, and you all have the love that I leave here for each one of you. It is spilling out of me even at this moment and finding its way to you all. There is even love for Alexthat is gushing out of me, Thomas. I held him for just a short while, but in those few minutes my heart was linked to his.
That child needs you and the girls, Thomas. And you may not know it yet, but you need him, too.
Tell the girls this, will you? Tell them that all the love that had been tucked inside this mortal heart of mine remains with you all. That’s how I will stay close. My love for you all is right there now. Just under your skin. And there it will always—
Oh! Oh, Thomas!
Look! Can you see it? It’s so beautiful! Look!
So beautiful!
Beautiful.
