As Bright as Heaven(54)

My feet feel leaden as I climb the stairs. Evie and Uncle Fred with Willa in his arms are already just inside the bedroom when I get to the second floor. A single table lamp is on and its faint light throws tall shadows over the room. “We’re here, Mama. We’re all here,” Evie is saying.

As my eyes adjust to the dimness of the room, I can see that Papa is at Mama’s bedside, his mask over his face. He’s still in his uniform, like he only just got here. He is leaning forward in his chair as he holds one of Mama’s hands. The breath in Mama’s lungs doesn’t sound like air but rather sloshing water. She is so pale she looks like a ghost.

Willa, in Uncle Fred’s arms, can’t seem to believe the figure on the bed is Mama. I can scarcely believe it. Willa stares at the bed and Mama, frowning. After a second or two she lays her head against Uncle Fred’s chest. “I want to go back downstairs,” she murmurs.

As Uncle Fred and Willa leave, Evie takes another step into the room, filling the empty space. Tears are running down her face. “We love you, Mama,” she says. “You can go. We’ll be all right. We’ll always remember you. You were so good to us.”

If there is a word of farewell I am supposed to add to this, I can’t find it. I can’t think of one thing I want to say. Mama turns her head slightly toward Evie and me, and she raises a finger on the hand my father isn’t holding. But that’s all she does. She doesn’t speak, doesn’t raise her head. Doesn’t do anything but hold up that one finger. Maybe she is saying “Hello” with it. Maybe she is saying “Good-bye.” Maybe she is just pointing to the ceiling, where on the other side of the roof is the starry October sky and beyond.

Or maybe she is saying, “Just one second there! Uncle Fred is wrong. I’m not going anywhere.”

I want to believe this is what she is saying. I think about all the kind words she has spoken to me over the years of my life, all the motherly touches, the gentle corrections. I think of how she said I could have the room in the attic when we moved to Philadelphia, how she let me join her in the embalming room so that I could help give back to all those poor dead souls the look of life, and how she allowed me to go with her to South Street, where I found and saved Baby Alex and brought him home to us.

I think of all these things and I choose to believe she is telling us Uncle Fred is mistaken. He is mistaken.

I raise my hand in return. I think she sees it. She lowers the finger lifted off her coverlet, and every part of her save her lungs goes still again.

Evie is weeping.

I turn from the room without saying anything.





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.