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On Earth as it is in Heaven
Prologue
I
sat in the dark and listened as the clock tick the seconds away, sometimes it
felt as if I had been listening to the sound of a clock my entire life. I was
finally at a place I thought I would never be, wishing and hoping that the clock
would stop ticking. My mind journeyed back through all of the moments that had
brought us to this place.
Most
people have no idea what it is like to be empathic, to feel the emotions of
others so much that you become divorced from your own out of sheer exhaustion.
There was one person who understood, and she was lying here now at the brink of
eternity waiting for the clock to stop ticking. From the moment my mother took
my hand on the day that I was born we had been connected in a way that few
people ever experience, and maybe we had always been connected from the
beginning of creation, I just knew that my life was about to change.
I
remember that day even now as I sat in a stark hospital room, holding my
mother’s hand waiting for the doctor who had journeyed from Denver to Colorado
Springs for the express purpose of seeing my mother. The family physician was
hovering outside the door with his eyes averted and I knew. There is a dark hole
that exists with everyone, it is the place that cracks open like a bolt of
lightening that splits the air in a thunderstorm and you drop into the darkness
with no way to stop or even slow your descent, it happens in the blink of an eye
when you hear news that your mind cannot reconcile with your reality. Mom had
already fallen into the precipice and here I sat at the edge of the cavern, just
as I always had, waiting and watching for the time when she would fight her way
back up to the surface.
The
door opened and the doctor entered, he was impeccably dressed in expensive
slacks and a sport coat, his blond hair expertly groomed, everything about him
was deliberate. I have never experienced someone who actually put so much
thought into every aspect of their “presentation”; my initial reaction was
“this guy should have been on the stage.” I probed his mind looking for any
indication that his “act” was put on or disingenuous but to my great
surprise he was the real deal. The real surprise came later when I realized, he
was like me! Through years of trial and error he had crafted his
“presentation” based on patient reactions and come up with a formula that
would convey in equal measure competence and compassion.
Dr.
“D” shook my mother’s hand while looking her straight in the eye and then
turned to introduce himself to me. As he took my hand he felt something pass
between us and a spark of surprise lit up his eyes as he also realized the
connection. He recovered quickly and turned his attention back to my mother and
you could see him reset as he dropped back into the role of physician.
“Mrs.
Marcovich, do you know why your doctor asked me come here today?” he asked.
My
mother’s eyes were wide with fear as she shook her head, no. It was clear that
she did know, but no one had said the words out loud.
“Mrs.
Marcovich, you have stage four ovarian cancer, and the reason I am here is that
I am one of only two doctors in the state who can perform the surgery that you
need.” There, it was out in the open, but I knew mother was too far down in
the hole now to comprehend a single word he had said.
He
waited the appropriate amount of time for the reaction to set in before
continuing, “I am going to go down the hall and examine your records and then
I will come back and discuss what we are going to do together to get you through
this, okay?”
Clearly
this was simply a way to get out of the room to allow us time alone to grieve.
There was no reason in this day of modern technology that a doctor of his
prominence would need to travel 70 miles on a Colorado winters day to see a
patient when he could have just examined her test results from the comfort of
his office. He was conducting an interview; he needed to be in the room with my
mother to access her spirit, her will to survive. He was also weighing her
support system to see if she had a reason to want to live. Given the staging of
my mother’s cancer she would be dead in six weeks without intervention or she
would die on the table if she couldn’t imagine her life after cancer.
I
turned to my mother after the door had quietly closed with a whooshing sound. I
could clearly hear my mother say, “I wish Mom was here.” referring to her
mother who had passed a few years earlier. Her lips never moved, but I had heard
her words just as I always had. There was such a look of desperation in her
eyes, like a cornered rabbit waiting for a wolf to attack.
“Grandma
is here Mom” I said I could feel my grandmother’s energy hovering near by
just out of the line of vision, but she was there just the same. There was no
mistaking the “feel” of her indomitable spirit. “And
I will be right here with you every step of the way”.
I
took a deep breath trying to push away all of the mental pictures rushing
unbidden through my head. They were her thoughts and pictures not mine, but they
were just as real as if they were my own. She feel a strange since of relief
that it was finally here, she had waited for this day for over forty years and
it was finally done. Her mind flashed on that day when at the age of sixteen she
saw here own death from cancer and now the waiting was over, the monster was out
of the closet.
The
words that my mother decided to actually say out loud were “Who will take care
of your father?” and the fight was on, she had found her reason to live.
Dr.
“D” reentered the hospital room with purpose, as if he had felt the shift
and he began explaining the course of treatment which included having my mother
transferred to a hospital in Denver for the surgery the following week. She had
passed the interview.
My
mother was transferred to a private suite to allow her family access 24 hours a
day while she waited for the move to the hospital in Denver.
We
took turns staying at the hospital at night because my mother had become fearful
of being alone. It was my sister’s turn to be with her while I returned to our
home in Denver to get some much needed rest and enjoy the comfort of sleeping in
my own bed curled up next to my husband’s warm body.
It
was 3:00 AM when I shot straight up in bed and yelled the word “NO!” I felt
the sensation of a candle flickering inside my heart and I knew it was about to
go out. Tears streamed down my face as startled husband held me in his arms. How
do you explain to someone that you just felt your mother trying to leave the
planet, knowing that this is what it is going to feel like when that day finally
comes? This is what it truly means when someone says, “it feels as if a part
of me has died.”
Seventy
miles away in Colorado Springs my sister was sleeping on the couch in the
sitting room of my mother’s hospital suite, when she was awaken by the sound
of something falling to the floor. Mom had disconnected all of the tubes and
needles that had been sustaining her, climbed over the rails of her bed and
reached the connecting door to the sitting room before collapsing into a heap on
the floor. Some part of her
consciousness left her body that day and did not return for six months. She had
no memory from that day until the day she completed chemotherapy and was
pronounced in remission. She had absolutely no idea what had occurred during
that six months, no memory of the surgery, the endless hours of vomiting from
the poisons coursing through her veins, the hair loss, and the unrelenting pain.
All of it had happened to someone else and finally she came out of the abyss
that had swallowed her on that cold winter day six months earlier.
We
had an 18 month reprieve before we found ourselves once again in a hospital room
with Dr. “D”. That day brought us to where we are now, listening to the
sound of the clock ticking and I hold my mothers hand, wishing that the ticking
would stop.
I
remembered that day when I held her hand across the desk in our shared office,
the visits to oncologists were over, there would be no more options or
treatments, only the business of dying lie ahead.
“Do
you think that when you get to heaven God will let you come back and tell me
what heaven is like?” I asked. It seemed to be the most natural question in
the world.
“I
guess we will just have to wait and see.” She responded; none of the emotions
present that you might expect given the situation in which we found ourselves.
You would think I had just asked if Santa Clause could bring me a Susie
Homemaker Oven for Christmas.
I
wasn’t there when the clock finally stopped. The needs of our business had
pulled me from her side, but as I stood in line at the bank, I knew. I felt her
kiss my cheek moments before my pager went off, it was finally over. Strangely,
thankfully, I didn’t feel the flickering candle again that I had dreaded since
that night John had held me in his arms. I felt only peace and gratitude and
relief that anyone who has traveled the long road of an extended death
experience with a loved one can understand. Nothing could have prepared me for
what was to come.
The
funeral home had come and removed my mother’s body, family members had begun
to arrive and preparations were underway for the service in a few days. I went
into my cocoon mode that is my safety net when I am exposed a room full of
emotional people. I was just sitting quietly waiting for the ride to the funeral
home when it began. A tendril of light stretched from somewhere beyond my
understanding and when it reached my heart the physical world fell away and I
lost any awareness of anyone in the physical world around me. I can’t say that
there was only me in that space because there was me and this connection to
everything in the Universe. There are no words in our vernacular to describe
what being connected to all of the wisdom in the Universe feels like. It is
everything and nothing; an awareness of all love, all joy, all peace, all
wisdom, all understanding, and nothing matters only being in that light. There
is no yesterday, no tomorrow and all of it infinite. There was so much
information that was transmitted or more appropriately “remembered” that I
am still trying to disseminate today 13 years later. It probably only lasted a
few minutes on this plain but it is a feeling that lasts literally forever.
Mom
had had certainly let me know what “heaven” is like and I didn’t know it
at the time but “empathic” death experiences are more common that you might
think. They happen in varying degrees from a feeling of peace and being bathed
in light to full blown transmissions similar to the one I experienced. My world
changed completely on that day and in a moment everything “woke” up and I
went from being empathic (clairsentience) and claircognizant to clairvoyant and
later clairaudient. A light switch was flipped and even though there are times
when I would have liked to have it switched back off, the journey began and
continues to this day.
Thanks,
Mom!