A Symphony of Cicadas (22 page)

“His condition
appears to have
improved,” the doctor told the mother while jotting down a few notes on his clipboard
.
“
He was well enough tonight to join the other kids during music hour, and he responded to the sounds.”

“Do you think that means he might be able to come home again?” Jacob’s mother asked, hope radiating from her eyes as she squeezed Jacob’s hand.

“It’s too soon to tell,” he apologized
.
“We’ll run a few more tests and
keep a watchful eye on him
for the next several days
.
But I wouldn’t cancel Hospice just yet
.
We won’t be out of the wood
s for a little while
.
I don’t want to get your hopes up, though it doesn’t hurt to hold on to
hope
for his sake
.
However, sometimes I’ve seen patients make miraculous recoveries on
ly
to pass away the very next day.” Jacob’s mother winced, and I could see the doctor regretting his
words
.
He started to say something else, and I could hear his brain searching for just the right words
.
But in the end he just smiled and squeezed her shoulder and then walked away to leave all of us alone.

Underneath the beeping from the monitor next to the bed and the noisy labored air that escaped from Jacob’s mouth as he slept, was the sound of his mother’s gentle weeping as she continued to hold his motionless hand
.
She was exhausted
.
I could sense it when I tuned into her, feeling the weight of stress hanging on her chest like a hundred bricks
.
Her emotions were a mixture of grief, sadness, anger, and a tinge of relief at the notion that everything might be over
soon
, followed by immense guilt for even thinking that way
.
And drowning it all was a feeling of fear, afraid for her little boy who
might cross over to
a place
she couldn’t follow
, and afraid for herself when her life was void of his presence.

She stayed that way for some time, praying next to him into the ear
ly
hours of the morning,
Please God
being her most fervent request to an almighty spirit that felt light years away
.
It was reminiscent of the prayer breathed from
John’s lips
a million breaths before in the church
where
we were
to have been
married.

Jacob’s mother
took a deep breath in an attempt to compose herself. She
wiped her eyes and searched
her son’s
face for any sign of movement that showed he might pull through this. I could see visions of Jacob in her mind, images that appeared to be from a few months earlier when he was full of life and running on his own two feet
.
I could see the sparks within Jacob’s head, currents of electricity that didn’t quite meet up
, making
it impossible for him to move on his own accord
.
The notes on the chart flung out at me as if under a microscope
.
Pediatric stroke
and
blood clot
were written in dark black ink, followed by scribbles of diagnosis and instructions of care for
the
nurses.

Jacob remained motionless in sleep, and his mother
submitted to
the heaviness of her eyes
as she
curled up on the couch to sleep for a few
hours
.
As she drifted off, the spirit woman in the corner moved forward and stood by Jacob’s bed
.
She didn’t touch him, but just stood there
watching him
.
Out of the shadows, I could see the striking resemblance she held to both Jacob and his mother
.
I wanted to ask her how she was related to them, but was aware of how private this moment was
.
I looked over at Aunt Rose with a look of helplessness, asking her with my eyes if we should leave, if it was
okay
if we were here
.
She gave a small nod of affirmation, then turned
back to Jacob and the spirit
.
I did the same.

It wasn’t long before I saw his body glow, the outline of his shape appearing to expand as his spirit grew
just
bigger than his body
.
The steady
sound
of the
heart monitor
next to him started to beep
fast
, waking Jacob’s mother with a start
.
She ran to his side and grabbed h
is arm
.
Jacob’s face remained
motionless.

“Nurse!” she shouted, grabbing the call button from the side of the bed and punching it with her thumb
over and over
. “Hang on Jacob, just hang on,” she pleaded with him
.
“
Nurse!”

Two nurses rushed in, moving his mother to the side as they checked his pulse
.
Jacob
’s body
began to shake
with violent movements. T
he machine
went
crazy as his body convulsed, forgetting the para
ly
sis that had left him immobile for the past few months
.
I could hear the crackling in his brain as he underwent another stroke, his inner voice screaming in agony, images flashing
through
his mind of things he had seen in his life and the face of the
calm
spirit woman who stayed
next to
the bed.

“
Code blue,”
was heard over the intercom
.
A crash cart was wheeled in, and they fired it up as a nurse held the
paddles
.
The doctor rushed into the room and barked orders at the nurses
who
surrounded Jacob’s body
.
One of the nurses
placed a breathing mask over his mouth while another
injected a clear substance into a bag of liquid connected by an IV to his arm
.
Jacob’s body ceased moving and he lay as if sleeping
.
The heartbeat on the monitor slowed from its rapid rate, moving to a regular beat before slowing even more until it became one thin line with a long beep to match.

“Clear!” the doctor
called
,
and
Jacob’s body jumped with the shock of electricity, the thin line jumping with it before settling back into an unresponsive scream
.
They tried it over and over, Jacob’s mother crying in the corner as she watched in helplessness, the spirit woman waiting near Jacob’s head, and Aunt Rose and me intruding on a moment that didn’t belong to us.

As the chaos swirled around Jacob’s body, I saw his spirit sit up and look around him
.
Fear was written all over h
is face as he looked at what was going on to his body and
with
all the people that rushed around him. But when his gaze settled on the spirit woman, he relaxed into an easy grin
.
She returned his smile with sheer happiness, the first strong emotion I had seen her express since first noticing her
.
Taking
Jacob’s
hand, she helped him to hop down from the
bed
.
He looked down at his legs, held his arms in front of him, and stretched every part of himself now that he was free from his frozen body.

“Welcome home, Jacob,” the spirit woman said as they walked towards us
.

Jacob didn’t even notice us as he moved towards us, but he did give one last
look
over his shoulder as his mother sat crying on the couch, the nurses putting the paddles away while the doctor told her they did everything they could
.
We all watched as the doctors and nurses left the room to give her a few moments with her son’s body
.
She
stood
up, hesitating with her hand over her mouth
.
She w
alk
ed
forward as if weights were strapped to her feet
.
She reached Jacob’s body,
which
seem
ed
very
small amid
the
mess of wires and machines
.
One by one, s
he unhooked them all, removing the breathing machine
last
from his pale face, and holding her hand against his cheek with the gentle
st
of touches
.
Jacob’s spirit broke free from the spirit woman’s hand, rushing to be near his mother
.
He touched her face in the same way she was touching the cheek of his body, and his mother shuddered into tears from a feeling she couldn’t quite place.

“Take care of him, sis,” she whispered
,
certain she was
heard as she relinquished her boy to the sister who had already passed on
.
Jacob kissed her on the cheek, smiling at his mother
with love
, and then ran back to his aunt
.
Together they evaporated from the room as his mother collapsed in a shaking and silent cry with her head on his lifeless chest.

“Where did they go?” I asked Aunt Rose.

“She’s leading him towards Heaven,” she said
. I
sighed and shook my head at the great irony
that we
have so many answers about
Heaven
in life
,
but knew nothing about
it
in death.

Fifteen

“I
don’t understand,” I said to Aunt Rose
.
“All this time I’ve been asking questions about Heaven, and no one seems to know anything at all. And then this kid gets to go to Heaven just like that, and you know exact
ly
what is going on?  What about Joey?  You didn’t seem to have
any
answers for me then!” My mind was racing overtime, the world opening up in a whole new light and
presenting
me with so many questions I didn’t know which to ask first.

We stood in an empty room now, the hospital long faded away
. I didn’t know where we were, but it was clear we were
in utter solitude
.
Aunt Rose smiled at me,
waving
her hand next to her to reveal a plush couch
.
She
sat down and patted the seat next to her
.
I joined her with caution, still having a hard time trusting this woman who both made everything feel more difficult and was the on
ly
one who could guide me to real answers.

I started.
“Where is Joey?
”

“I don’t know
.
”

My frustration, never far below the surface, exploded.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” I demanded
.
“You knew where Jacob was headed, didn’t you?  So why don’t you know where my son is?” Aunt Rose sighed, giving me
another one of her patronizing smiles as if I were but a child and she were about to teach me the ins and outs of the universe
.
The worst of it was that
I felt like a child.

“Rachel, you want me just
to
say he’s in Heaven, right?  Well I can’t be certain he’s there,” she
maintained
.
“I can assume, as can you
.
It’s like
ly
that’s where he is, being that he’s a child and leaving the world behind just seems to come
easier
for them
.
But can I guarantee it?  No
.
Just because we can’t find him doesn’t mean that he’s moved beyond this divide to get to Heaven
.
He may be doing some exploring of his own or
he may be
stuck in his own attachments
.
He could be anywhere.”

“Why doesn’t anyone know anything concrete about Heaven?” I asked Aunt Rose
.
I was thinking back to conversations with
Jane
, when she told me she felt like there was a Heaven but couldn’t be sure.

“Because none of us have been there,” Aunt Rose said
.
“If we had, we wouldn’t be back to this divide
.
We’d be there to stay for good.”

“Ok
ay
, look
.
My friend
Jane
, who also exists in this divide, didn’t seem to know much of anything about Heaven. In fact, she seemed to believe in it through faith alone
.
But when pressed for facts, she couldn’t be sure there was a Heaven, a God, or anything beyond this place we exist now
.
She just felt it was true
.
But here you are, speaking with certainty that there is a Heaven, that this is on
ly
the resting place before we move on, that Jacob was being led by th
at
spirit
to this Heaven, and that Joey may or may not be there
.
How can you be so sure of these things, and yet you’re here in this world and not there?”

“Now you’re getting to the real questions,” Aunt Rose said, her eyes twinkling at my confusion
.
“Do you know who that spirit woman was that led Jacob from the room?” she asked me.

“She was his aunt, I think,” I said
.
“It seemed like he knew her, she looked a lot like him and his mother, and his mom referred to her sister
, so
I can on
ly
assume
she
passed away and was now there in the room when he passed.”

“Yes, she was probab
ly
his aunt
.
But do you know her purpose there?” Aunt Rose pressed on.

“Yo
u said she was a ‘fami
ly
guide’,
someone who guides a loved one through the afterlife,” I said.

“Yes
.
But with children, their time in this divide is very brief, sometimes serving as just a pathway to Heaven
.
You saw how Jacob kissed his mother and then left with the guide
.
He was leaving her for the last time, and he was
okay
with it
.
His guide’s responsibility is to help him through the transition of life to death
.
And when he’s ready, she leads him to the entrance of Heaven where he will stay forever.”

“So he’s trapped there?  What kind of Heaven is that?” I asked Aunt Rose, and she laughed at my naivety.

“No, he’ll choose to stay there
.
Once you enter Heaven, it’s so magnificent you won’t want to leave at all
.
But the on
ly
way to be able to pass through those gates in the first place is to let go of everything that exists on this side of Heaven
.
That includes the people you once loved and the life you once led
.
So you have the ability to come and go, but no
one wants to come back to the darkness of this world once they’ve let it go and moved to the next.”

“How do you know so much when you haven’t been there?” I asked her.

“I told you before, I’m a guide,” she told me
.
“I’m your guide, and I’ve been the guide of several before you
.”
She paused and counted off on her fingers
.
“Let’s see, there have been
four
I think
.
It’s been so long I can hard
ly
remember
.
I led one of my goo
d friends when she passed on
.
S
he didn’t linger much at all, being ready to die in her later years of life
.
One of my neighbors passed away some time ago and that bitter man had no fami
ly
or friends at all who he’d be comforted by
.
So I helped him to get to the peaceful side of death and transition to Heaven
.
And there were a couple more
.
All of them, once they were done peering into
the
window of the living, were led by me to Heaven where we both got a glimpse of what’s to come before they left me and moved on
.
Let me tell you
,
darling, what waits for us on that other side is better than anything you’ve ever imagined.”

“But if it’s so great, why are you here and not there?” I asked her.

“Because you have to be able to let go of the living and the world they live in before you can move on to Heaven,” she
affirmed
.
“And, well, you know how that goes.”

“That’s why I’m here,
too
,” I
mused
.

“That’s correct,” she
nodded
, free of judgment.

I was beginning to understand
.
Her obsession with my sister and me, her inability to d
etach was being
mir
rored in my feelings for John
.
I
thought about how
I
couldn’t tear
myself away from being near him and Sam, and how in
volved I got in the living world even though I was no longer a part of it
.
All of a sudden, I was having a hard time holding my death against her, h
aving just risked John’s life through my
own
attachment
.
I was even having a hard time staying angry over the
death of my
son
.
Remembering the intense pull to bring
John
over, the way I had to struggle to stop killing him, I could get a sense of what Aunt Rose had experienced in my final moments of life
.
I realized she couldn’t overcome the intense emotions that existed in this world, the feelings we clung t
o when we were able to grasp on
to little else.

Even now I was being tortured
by my own longing
.
More than anything, I longed to see John, to be by his side as he recovered in the hospital
.
But just as strong was the fear that my presence would put his life in peril
.
It had taken so much for me to be able to pull away from dragging him down
.
What if I found myself in the same position I was in before, leading him down a road he could never return from, leaving behind Sam and everything else he held dear in this life?  I couldn’t do that to him
.
And yet, I needed to be next to him again.

“Come with me?” I begged Aunt Rose
.
“Stay near me while I visit John?  I don’t think I can do this alone
.”
I could tell in her eyes that she wanted to protest this, to persuade me to leave him behind and focus on moving on
.
I could also tell she wasn’t going to say any of this out loud
.
Instead, she
nodded
.

“But darling,” she cautioned, “i
f you start pulling him back down, I can’t stop you
.
On
ly
you have the power to refrain from that
.
And he’s in such a weakened state, any thoughts you may have of him being with you in this existence will sure
ly
kill him
.
So go ahead and visit him, but practice restraint
.
Keep your mind clear and your intentions pure
.
And think of his needs before your own.”

I nodded and grasped her hand, squeezing it tight and drawing comfort from the safety net I gathered from her presence
.
Together we
left
the empty room and
went
back
to
the hospital
where Jacob had just passed on
ly
moments before
.
But this
wing
was different. There were no guitars playing or children singing
.
No streamers hung from the ceiling
,
no
drawings
were taped to
the wall
.
This wing of the hospital h
ad
a
far
more serious air, where doctors and nurses rushed from room to room, fami
ly
members shuffled in and out with somber faces, and the most prominent sounds were the voices over the intercom and a steady stream of beeps from the nurses’ station and each room we passed by.

J. Hanlon
was on the wall outside his room, and I peered in as if I were visible and afraid to wake him
.
I jumped with a start when I realized someone else was in there with him, a woman holding his hand
.
A dangerous feeling of jealousy
began
to bubble up before I realized it was on
ly
my sister
.
I let out a long breath, realizing just how hard this was going to be.

John was sleeping,
his appearance
fragile in his hospital gown
.
He was hooked up to an IV at his arm and wires attached to his ch
est to monitor his heart rate
.
T
he machine
beeped beside him
at a steady pace
, almost
as if nothing had happened
.
Sara sat next to him, rubbing the top of his hand with her thumb as he slept
.
She stared off at a wall, her mind traveling a million miles a minute
.
I did my best to tune out her thoughts, but captured a few fragments of the troubles she’d been having with Kevin, fears about joint custody, and the terrifying thought of supporting herself on one income instead of two.