To Heaven and Back (14 page)

Despite this reassurance, my mother and I considered whether or not she should return to North Carolina to be with George. As we pondered this issue over our morning coffee, a great grey owl swooped down and landed on the deck railing adjacent to our breakfast area. Having never seen this type of owl, we were awed and stood to admire it.

They are large and elegant animals. We saw that one of our cats was also on the deck and wondered how the two animals would react to each other. Our cat slowly walked to the railing and reached up toward the owl. The owl, which could easily have eaten it for a snack, gave our cat a quick look, disregarded it, and continued to stare in our direction. The owl seemed to have concern only for us.

Throughout that day and subsequent days, the owl appeared to follow us as we moved from room to room. My stepfather and I continued to have a loving disagreement over the telephone about which of us needed my mother’s help more—he said
me
, and I said
him
—until by the week’s end, I was determined to send my mother home. As my mother was climbing into the taxi to begin her trip home, the great grey owl settled onto a nearby post and simply stared at me insistently, as it had done all week. I could not ignore the intensity of its gaze and felt as though it would come and land directly on my head if I didn’t immediately give it my full
attention. The bird clearly had something to say and, when I finally paid attention, I felt the owl urging me to go with my mother to North Carolina.

My stepfather and I had an extremely close and important bond. If George were to die without my being present, I knew I would be devastated and overcome with remorse. Despite my continued disability and the difficulty of traveling in my condition, I decided to accompany my mother. I grabbed my purse, gave one last look of gratitude to the owl for its guidance and persistence, and tried to scramble into the taxi.

The trip to North Carolina was ambitious and arduous. We had rushed to the Jackson Hole airport, but just missed the last flight for the day. A friend graciously drove us five hours to the Salt Lake City airport, but spending the night in the backseat of his pickup truck while we waited for the next flight was not very restful, to say the least!

When we finally arrived at the side of my stepfather’s hospital bed, we found him to be in good spirits. George’s son, Larry, was also present, and we had some wonderful and loving conversations. We all celebrated my mother’s birthday in George’s hospital room the next day. George laughed, felt great, and was even able to eat a bit of his favorite food: cookies.

My mom and I were quite relieved at his condition and were in high spirits the next morning.
We sat at her breakfast table sipping coffee and contemplating George’s health and the possibility of his release from the hospital. As we chatted, we looked out the picture window and gazed upon a large, entirely barren Bradford pear tree. My mother then told me the story of that tree.

She and George loved the large, pink blossoms of the many Bradford pear trees in their neighborhood, so they had planted this tree many years prior with the hope of enjoying its annual display of color. While this particular tree had continued to grow taller and taller, it had never produced a single blossom. She said that George was so dismayed by the tree’s inability to blossom that he planned to cut it down in the spring and plant a new one. He loved color and wanted to see blossoms from their breakfast table.

We were still feeling hopeful as we drove to the hospital, but encountered a radically different situation upon our arrival. George had taken a turn for the worse and his organs were failing. God was calling to him, and we knew that his remaining time on earth was short. My mom, Larry, and I decided to let him pass into the next world with dignity and love. We removed the feeding tube and chose not to place him on a ventilator. We each expressed our deep love for George and each gave him permission to leave. We held each other and held George as his spirit peacefully left this world.

The following morning, as we sat down for coffee at my mom’s breakfast table, we looked out the window and gasped. Their once forlorn Bradford pear tree was bursting with color. This tree, which had been barren just twenty-four hours earlier, was now filled beyond capacity with large, beautiful, perfect pink blossoms.

These colorful blossoms stayed on that tree until well after frost had felled the blossoms of neighboring trees. When this tree finally began to drop its leaves, it did so on the side facing away from the window before dropping a single blossom on the side that faced my mother’s breakfast window. What a gift from my stepfather. What a miracle. My mother subsequently commissioned a painting of that tree, with its bounty of blossoms, which she gave to me in celebration of George and of our shared experience. I have hung this painting in my bathroom dressing area and it gives me a deep sense of peace and contentment every time I look at it.

My return trip to Jackson Hole was taxing, but calm. No fire alarms or other such unexpected difficulties. When I finally arrived in my driveway, I saw the great grey owl land once again. It settled onto a post within arm’s reach of me and we fondly regarded each other. With tears in my eyes and gratitude in my heart, I recognized the angel within the owl and gave thanks for the compassionate guidance it had given me.

I have never seen that owl since. Its presence reminded me once again that God loves us, directs our steps, and is always available to us in one manner or another. Truly, God’s messengers are everywhere and come to us in the forms that we can and will accept. That may mean a great grey owl or other sort of creature to one person, and a human being to another.

As I mentioned earlier in this book when describing one of my conversations with an angel in a sundrenched field in heaven, there are angels all around us and we each have “personal” angels who watch over us all day, every day. They help us, nudge us, and guide us in all sorts of little ways that we usually don’t notice. Sometimes they push us forward and sometimes they pull us backward. Always, they want very much for us to follow the path that has been laid out for us by God.

A couple of months later, when I had physically recovered some and become a little more mobile, I was asked to speak to groups at several local churches. There was great interest in hearing my story, and I was happy to share my experience of God’s miraculous interventions in my life. Portions of my story have been recounted on many occasions since then, and by numerous people. An audio recorded version of my original presentation is still being circulated. I see this continued interest in my story as a demonstration of people’s desire to be inspired by, and believe in, the possibility of God’s intervention.

It is often difficult to believe that an all-powerful God could possibly care about each one of us individually or be willing to directly intervene in our lives. I am a scientist. I understand numbers and statistics. I am skeptical and a bit cynical. There are so many of God’s creations on this planet and we are each so small. I wonder how any individual can be significant when compared to the universe and how it could be possible for God to know us individually, let alone love us deeply and intercede when necessary.

What a scientist cannot account for is the alteration of time and space and dimension that is God’s. I certainly cannot understand how it works, but I have experienced it and I accept that each one of us is a special and valued child of God. We are humans and do not have the capacity to understand God or begin to understand God’s capabilities. Consider this as a paltry example: Does a parent with multiple children run out of love? Does that same parent value one child less just because they also have other children, or do they love the child less who occasionally makes them angry? The answer to all of these hypothetical questions, of course, is “no.” The more we love, the more love we have to offer. So it is with God’s love for us. It is inexhaustible.

God definitely knows each one of us. I mean “know” in an absolute, complete, and pure sense: like a seamstress knows her dress when she has grown the cotton from a seed, spun the cotton
fibers into thread, woven the fabric, and stitched the fabric together to make a dress; or like a carpenter knows the chair that he has crafted by hand from a tree that he himself planted, nurtured, and felled. God knew each one of us even before He sent us into our mother’s womb.

Not only did the telling of my story give others inspiration and hope, it also freed a great many people to tell their own stories. I cannot count the number of people who have approached me or called me, asking for a couple of minutes of my time. Each one of them begins their conversation the same way: “I want to tell you about something that happened to me … I never told anyone about it because I didn’t think anyone would believe me.” Then each proceeds to tell me of an extraordinary experience that occurred in which they interacted with angels, communicated with God’s messengers, or spent time with spirits. Each of them feels liberated after telling me of their experiences, and it is clear that each feels validated by talking to me.

The human brain is quite good at remembering events, but not usually so adept at remembering the precise details. If you ask most people to describe their wedding, a child’s birth, or other such important life events, the tiny details will have faded and the stories will likely have changed some over time. Think about fisherman’s tales, which grow with each telling, or the old-time game of “telephone” in which a story is whispered from one person to the next. The last person in line tells the
story out loud and, when compared to the original version, is usually full of notable differences. Even vivid dreams rarely stay in our memories for more than a few minutes.

I have observed one of the truly remarkable and consistent aspects of accounts of experiences that involve the presence or intervention of God is that the description of the experience remains constant no matter how much time has elapsed. People who have been involved in a godly experience remember with clarity and constancy the details of the incident and vividly recall their emotions as though they had just occurred.

The stories of almost everyone who has spoken with me began with some sort of traumatic situation. This is fairly predictable, and it is unfortunate that we rarely have such intense spiritual connections except under conditions of dire stress. I believe that anyone can have the same connections and experiences that I have had, but I think we are too distracted by the world around us when we are under “normal” circumstances. When we are in dire circumstances, these distractions quickly fall away and we are able to discern that which is most important: our relationship with God.

Under ordinary circumstances, it is usually quite difficult to voluntarily remove these distractions in order to experience God. Paul Hayden, my minister, likens it to the frequencies on a radio. We must tune our soul to the “right frequency” in
order to hear the messages being sent to us from God.

One day after I had recovered enough to return to my medical practice, a woman I knew arrived at my office without an appointment. She knew it was my busiest day of the work week, but she insisted on speaking with me. Now, to understand this part of the story, you must understand our shared history. Shortly after I began my medical practice in Wyoming, this woman’s husband came to me for care. He underwent a major surgery, which I performed, and had no difficulties. His hospital course after surgery was entirely uncomplicated; he felt great and by the third day, I was beginning to plan his discharge from the hospital.

Unbeknownst to me, my patient and his wife had visited with their Latter-Day Saints bishop prior to this surgery and had received blessings from him. He had told my patient’s wife that she would have to give up the thing that she loved the most. He told my patient that God was very pleased with him, that the veil between this world and the next would be very thin, and that he would be required to make a choice.

Before surgery, my patient and his wife had discussed together their interpretation of these blessings. They had concluded that my patient would have to choose between continued life on earth or physical death. They were both spiritually devoted and knew that my patient would choose God.
On the fourth day after his surgery, my patient suddenly dropped dead while in the bathroom. His wife later told me that throughout the day of his passing, her husband had been speaking with angels who he said were in the room with them. He kept asking her if she could see them and was disappointed that she couldn’t. He told her how much he loved and valued her as a wife, but that he had to go with the angels and that he would visit her.