A Symphony of Cicadas (32 page)

Jane was there, and she ran to me
,
surrounded
and followed
by a storm of balloons.

“You’re doing it, aren’t you?” she accused me with a smile
.
“You’re leaving all this behind for something better
.
Am I right?”

“How did you know?”

“Honey, it couldn’t be
clearer
if you hired a plane to write it in the sky,” she laughed
.
“Yee!  I’m so excited for you!” she squealed.

“You could come with me, you know,” I pointed out
.
She shrugged with a grin.

“Maybe one day
.
Hold me a seat when you get there
.
I’ll join you when I’m ready. But for now, I think I’m
okay
being right here in my own little Heaven.”

We sat together and people-
watched
.
Or rather, Jane watched the random faces passing us by while I kept my eyes locked on John
.
I didn’t want to forget a thing
.
But there was something different about him, a lightness in his step and a permanent pull at the corner of his mouth. He and Sam looked more at ease than I’d ever seen them before, even in life
.
Sam held
just
a hint of being a boy, wisdom in his eyes from experience and growing up
.
And the two of
them joked with each other,
an easy camaraderie between them as they spent
a sil
ly
evening at the carnival among the lights and balloons, men walking on stilts, and music enveloping the whole scene.

I saw her at the same time John did, a girl with strawberry
blonde
hair
.
She was sitting with friend
s
several yards away from where he stood, and it was as if the crowd parted to create a path that led
straight
to her
.
She
got
up
to leave
with her friends
, leaving her purse behind on the bench where she had been sitting.

“Hold on, I’ll be right back,” John said, rushing forward to grab the purse before
someone else took off with it.
“Miss!” he called out, and she turned
.
“You left this behind
.”
Her eyes widened when she saw her bag in his hands
.
She thanked him, taking the purse from his hand and brushing her fingers against his in the motion.

It was as if time turned sideways and broke open, spilling all the contents of the future out in front of me
.
Time skipped, and she was there in front of him, kissing him
while dressed in white as they stood
in front of all their friends and fami
ly
.
Time jumped again and it was Sam’s
college
graduation, the two of them cheering a few rows down from Wendy and her husband
.
Each jump brought them further along in life, the lines showing on their faces from years of laughter. I waited for the jealousy, the painful feelings that he had forgotten me in the eyes of another woman
.
But it never came
.
Instead I felt elation, the magnitude of happiness grow
ing as they fell deeper in love
.
I experienced
joy through their joy
.
I lived in the fast
-
forward of their
lives
until the final scene, John now an old man at the edge of her grave, smiling as he thanked her for a life well
-
lived
.
And then it all wound back up
and
we were at the carnival
,
music surrounding us as John handed her the purse.

“I’m John,” he said
.
She smiled at him then, letting her fingers remain on his just a little too long before pulling away.

“My name’s Hannah.”

John wouldn’t find out until after they were married that she worked for a month at a flower shop
, filling in
when the owner’s sister died.

Twenty-four

I
was coming to the end of my time here on earth
.
It seemed like so long ago that I h
ad entered this divide between Heaven and E
arth, and it made me think back to that very first day when I had been knocked from my body and found myself lost and alone in a forest filled with both wonder and fright
.
And to think, I
’d
had no idea
before it happened
that
I was taking
my last breaths among the living.

When a moment is
so
tremendous it knock
s
the
familiar part of the world off balance, you’d think there would be some sort of clue before it happened
.
Maybe just a hint, or even a premonition that
would have allowed me
to at least hold
my breath until the moment had
passed and
I could
find
my
footi
ng once again.

But life doesn’t work that way.

Life is often unfair
.
Sometimes things have to hurt, sometimes they’re even unbearable, and sometimes the pain is necessary.

I learned this lesson the hard way
.
But I learned much more than just that.

Bad things
can
happen to anyone
.
O
r rather, things
happened that I
wouldn’t
have
chosen for
myself
.
When it
came
down to it, any notion that
I
’d
had
absolute control
during the course of
my life was
but a comforting thought
covering
a cloud of absurdity
.
I was
mere
ly
a miniscule blip
on a ve
ry large course of time that had
only just
begun.

Sure,
I
’d been able to mold my path
in the general direction
of my choice
.
I took
half-blind leaps of faith, and conjure
d
up
my
very best intentions in a
five
-
year plan
in which
I’d
banked all
my
hope
s and dreams
.
But
as it was,
even
my
most fervent
efforts
at success
were
thrown off
-
course by
someone else who had
the same freedom of choic
e
that I did
.
Because of this, I was cast into the
Bermuda Triangle of
L
ife
A
fter
D
eath
, leaving
me
in uncharted seas where
my on
ly
chance of survival wa
s to tread water until
I beca
me familiar with
my
surroundings.

But perhaps that was supposed to be the plan all along.

I’d learned so much about myself since the day I had died, and I’d learned so much about life and love
.
Once I final
ly
stopped fighting the current and trusted in
the mercy of the waves, the tempests,
and
the creatures that lurk
ed
at
my
feet,
the storm began to
calm
and revealed a real
ly
beautiful ocean
.
It
was
on
ly
when
I
abandon
ed
control
t
hat
I
was
able to discover
pure freedom.

In my death, I discovered what it was like to
tru
ly
live.

Twenty-five

“I
think I’m ready,” I told Aunt Rose
.
She stepped forward to take my hand.

“Are you sure?” she asked
.
I glanced one last time at John who was now in deep conversation with Hannah, Sam at his side as they chatted
as casual as long-time friends
among the bright lights and loud music
.
I smiled.

“I real
ly
am,” I told h
er
.
I could hear the songs of H
eaven flirting with the sounds of the carnival
.
I was being overwhelmed with a sense that this world was no longer mine, that I didn’t belong here,
that
I didn’t even want to belong here
.
It was like all of the past was one sweet memory of a more naïve time, and I was about to go home.

Before I could take one last look, say a final goodbye,
or even
breathe in a final whiff of the world around me, Aunt Rose and I were whisked through the air at
a
speed I had never experienced
.
We broke through the atmosphere of earth, plummeted through space like shooting stars, and whipped by the silent
planet
giants in the sky like passing
mile markers
on a highway
.
The air around me tasted like a copper penny, though sweet in the strangest way
.
And I kept my eyes open so I wouldn’t miss anything.

We reached the barrier in what felt like moments, slowing to a stop right in front of the glowing wall
.
I could see the swirling wind
storming
on the outside of the border of our galaxy, and I reached forward to touch the wall and feel the vibration of its movement
.
The wall glowed brighter under my touch, and then moved aside to create a vacant doorway of space that
created a safe passage
through the swirling tornado to the other side of our galaxy
.
I peered through and could see a whole universe of beauty, lands f
a
rther than the eye could
see or
imagine, showing all the parts of earth I had loved in my life
that now existed in Heaven
.
Streams flowed into lakes, the fields of lush green expanded to the horizon,
and
deer grazed
on leafy bushes
.
A mountain towered over
a
lake, a waterfall streaming
down its side
and creating a luscious fog that misted over a garden
holding
every flower I had ever seen in my life.

And this was just what I could see from where we hovered on our side of the galaxy.

I wanted to see more. Still clutching Aunt Rose’s hand, I moved forward. She began to loosen her grip, startling me from continuing through
.
Confused,
I looked back at her.

“This is as far as I go,” she apologized
.
She
smiled
at me with kind eyes, her comfortable beauty radiating in the glow of barrier
.
I embraced her, though I felt no sadness
.
I pulled back and looked into her eyes, the silky blue I
alone
had
n’t
inherited
.
If I looked deep enough, I could catch glimpses of her thoughts, her life,
and
the very parts of her that made her who she was
.
And within it all, I felt her
yearning
to join me and leave the sadness and heartache behind.

“Come with me,” I said to her,
but
she pulled back at the suggestion
.
She looked back in Earth’s direction, even though it was far
too distant to see
.

“I can’t,” she said,
but
her tone was unconvincing.

“Yes
,
you can,” I assured her
.
“Leave all that behind
.
Let’s move on together
.
Le
t me be your final traveler to H
eaven.”

“But what about Sara?” Aunt Rose asked
.
“Who will guide her when it’s her time?”

“Sara will be fine,” I promised her. “There is always someone
for
those
who cross over
.
Y
ou told me that
.
But it’s your time now to move beyond this divide
.
Let’s cross over together
.”
I took her hand in mine
.
She hesitated for on
ly
a moment,
taking
a deep breath
and letting
it out
as she weighed the decision
.
She looked through the doorway, peering at the worlds that
were waiting
for us to explore
.
The look in her eyes went from fearful and unsure to
longing and
determined anticipation.

“Let’s go,” she whispered
, her hushed voice filled with giddiness, her s
mile
that
of a child
, and we walked through
.
And the songs of the angels cascaded over us, reminiscent of the cicadas’ song in a forest a long, long time ago.

The end.