Pieces of You (26 page)

Janine had given up trying to figure out why she was seated on a train or where it was supposed to be taking her and had started to read the various placards within her range of vision. Some bore advertisements for vacation destinations, designer accessories and luxury hair care products and others bore inspirational quotations.

Although she found herself unable to focus on the contents of the placard nearest to her seat, she somehow knew exactly what it contained.

“For love is as strong as death. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away.” (Song of Songs 8: 6, 7)

In retrospect, she might have known what would happen next but, looking up, she caught sight of her beloved, to her total amazement
. She
exclaimed with unconcealed joy
,
“My darling, Mark, you’re here for my birthday! My prayers have been answered! I have missed you so. There were moments when I thought I’d never see you again.”

She had to pause and just drink in his appearance.

“You look wonderful to these starved eyes. Handsome and radiating health!”

Mark was gazing at her with undisguised adoration.

“I’ve never felt better or more peaceful. Just seeing you sets off surges of indescribable pleasure! Let me just hold you. I’ve longed for this; to press your body into mine and taste the sweetness of your mouth.”

All the questions in her mind were overridden by the insistence of her body
,
but the seating arrangement took over where her will power had left off. By the way Mark looked intently at her and then into the distance, she could tell that there was something he was struggling to share.

While Janie speculated about a poetic speech, Mark beseeched heaven for words that would make her understand.

Looking into her eyes while gently stroking her cheek and neck, he began:

“My dear one, my bride; are you still committed to being my final partner?”

Janine’s look told him everything he needed t
o know, even before she replied,
“Certainly, dearest Mark, although I’d like a traditional ceremony so that we can make that commitment in front of witnesses.” 

“I want that, too, if we’re given the time. Right now, I need to share some of what has happened to me. I felt like I was letting you down because I couldn’t come to you these last few days. Be assured, it was only because it wasn’t in my power. I don’t know how to begin to explain what I’ve been through. I’m sure it will sound bizarre coming from a person diagnosed as comatose but I’m telling you, with absolute sincerity, that it all seemed very real to me. In my spirit I relived significant events of my life before I knew you and even had the opportunity of looking into a future with you.”

Janine was looking at him intently, her eyes flashing assorted messages: awe; disbelief, dread and admiration. Mark continued.

“I thought it would take a lot to convince you. You do believe me, don’t you?”

Janine nestled even closer to him.

“I was even given a guide for this journey, a spirit. Maybe that’s not quite right. Zachri said he’s always been a part of my spirit. I never even believed in such entities until I met Zachri but he has such wisdom and power and more compassion than I’ve ever felt… Well, more, that is, than I had ever felt before I met you, my love. He knew so much about me and about you too! Did he visit you, also?”

“No, he must be exclusively your angel. I believe that you believe your encounters were real but the e-mails I’ve been receiving from Martin told a far different story.

“
He wrote that you have remained comatose with not one reflexive action to imply awareness of your surroundings. What you’re saying is that, though physically incapacitated, in some way you were mysteriously active. Amazing! You couldn’t make up a story like this. Anyway, I know you wouldn’t lie.

“
I want to know everything you went through!
Your travels; what you discovered, what it all seems to mean and lots of detail about the future you saw for us!”

“I think I’ve changed.”

Seeing Janie’s look of alarm, Mark added:

“For the better; maybe a little less selfish, more capable of the Corinthians’ version of loving or at least of protecting, trusting, and hoping. As for the future, some of what I’ve seen of its living conditions is not so good; actually it’s terrifying. But I was shown a way to make it easier for u…” Mark stopped himself from saying ‘us’ just in time and changed it to “for you.”

“Terrifying? You’re scaring me.”

“Janie, I’d rather describe the best of times—our romantic interlude. Okay?”

“Please. That would be a story with a happy ending.”

Mark told her almost in a whisper, “We traveled to a seaside paradise and made love listening to the sea…”

“I had that dream! Was it as incredible an experience as I imagined?” Janine asked laughingly but with her mouth agape and her eyebrows at least a half inch higher than their usual position.

“Darling Janie, if I tell you the perfection we discovered there by the sea, could you possibly believe me? Or would you write it off as the hallucinations of a man surrendered to love?”

“Um, I don’t know how to answer that. It seems highly subjective but a perception worthy of study. Maybe I’m the one hallucinating, yet I feel your hand in mine. If you place your lips over mine, I will be sure…”

As their lips touched, Janine felt herself falling—or was it the world and all its cares falling away, leaving them in a thrilling vacuum and so closely bound that whatever she experienced would be echoed with equal or greater intensity within him? They were the heirs of passion and fulfillment. Nothing could have merited such gifts. Their triumph was not the selfish act of lust. Her focus was entirely on him and his on her.

They had become one: one hand; one heart, one hope. As the passion faded, it was replaced by blissful peace.  Peace like that of a river on a windless summer day. Peace such as that which descends after the storm is over.
The p
eace that follows when problems are finally resolved. It was a time reserved for harmony.

***

The shrill ringing of the telephone shattered the luxurious tranquility of the hours before dawn. Janine reached for the phone on her bedside stand.

Martin’s voice on the other end was barely audible as he choked out the words: “He’s gone.”

Mark’s heart had stopped—an outcome his doctors had feared but had refrained from voicing to his family.

***

No one on the earthly side of the veil could see what was taking place but everyone on the other side had a ringside seat at the transformation.

At Mark’s side in the hospital room, the same Zachri who had appeared to Mark to be a medium-sized middle-aged average male, neither Hollywood handsome nor physically repulsive
,
was now a spiritual vision like nothing Mark had ever seen, even in artist’s renditions of angels.

His form flickered. Zachri, the spirit, was not bound by edges, as a human body is, but neither was it a formless blob.

Words came tumbling out of Mark; ‘exalted’, ‘glorious’, ‘terrifying’, ‘stunning’ but English words now comingled with an unlimited supply of new ones in languages of other nationalities, worlds and life forms.

Zachri’s appearance now seemed much less important to Mark than what arose from him: colors that could never be recreated from earthly gradations, even though tiny shards might be scattered throughout earthly landscapes. Emotions so perfectly loving that a human would exchange the whole world for their blessing. Sounds that beckoned a human soul to open and absorb, setting aside every defense, every desire for self-preservation in response to their call.

             
Zachri reached out to Mark and, as he responded, Mark saw his own useless physical body give way to a new form, almost a mirror image of Zachri’s.

             
“I’m so sorry I doubted your reality, Zachri. If I could only have seen you as you are….”

             
“Have no fear. We who are Spirit guides have to appear in familiar and recognizable forms until you are convinced that we are real. When a heart is ready our true bodies become visible. Your time has come.”

“I go willingly. You have shown me my accomplishments and my mistakes and unveiled the way of true love. The choice I’ve made is the only adequate expression of that love. Janie will seek and find pieces of me in many places. I know now that she is the one, not me, who can use the lessons of my life to triumph in a world gone amok. She will need so much more than I could give if I were to have remained physically at her side.

You have shown me that I am not abandoning her by going. She will feel my love even more intensely than when I made love to her—but only as she accepts the change in me.”

***

An earthbound person, if given some way to witness this exchange, would have seen the two spirits rise, bathed in a flash of beauty and light, although the best part would still remain out of view – the joyous moment of arrival and the glorious reception awaiting those spirits.

Shaking herself awake as Martin’s words echoed in her mind, Janine screamed only one word, “No!” before collapsing.

The funeral was a formal naval affair, an official ceremony in a faraway place and burial at sea. Janine had no money for the trip and, as a civilian not married to the deceased, would not have been given access anyway. She could not even say goodbye.

The last meeting, that vivid dream that had felt more real to her than even her own bodily functions, had seemed so clearly to be a new beginning, not the last scene of their love story.

Now her world was a place of uncontrollable pain. Few people understood; after all, they had only been lovers for a few months. Janine could tell this was in the minds of most of her family and friends. Presenting a stoic face to the world was impossible. She wept at inconvenient moments, embarrassing herself and startling those around her but it was a reflexive action. She hadn’t been prepared for Mark to die.  She couldn’t will the pain away or stuff it deep inside.

How could he be gone? Full recovery had been expected, prayed for, seemingly confirmed as imminent. Frantically trying to hold on to him, Janine went through all the e-mails, photos and his last voice-mail messages. He was so present—so very much alive—in all of them. Where could he be now? Why couldn’t she locate him? Surely the man she loved couldn’t be so totally in her life one moment and completely erased the next! The shock was beyond comprehension.

Janine searched ceaselessly for Mark, for any sign of his having been there. A few messages from Martin expressed his own pain. He tried to tell Janine how difficult it was to share memories of a father he still desperately needed with someone who had barely entered his own world.

Martin chose to sever the tenuous connection, thus stripping Janine of even those glimpses of the father visible in his son. Days and weeks passed, with her grief only ever being suspended during a few hours of restless sleep.

A brief reprieve came with a visit from her grandchildren and with it, a startling occurrence. The children had been piled into bed with their grandma until the younger one was pushed out by his sister. With grandma’s arm encircling the remaining child, sleep was about to enfold them both when, suddenly, Mark was there, talking to Janine, radiating a curious mixture of intensity and industry. Her excitement and relief at seeing him was so overwhelming that her words tumbled out.

“Mark, you’re back! Thank God! I’ve been looking everywhere for you. I was even trying to force open the doors of heaven. Well, at least trying to envision the living conditions if you were there. When I couldn’t find you, I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t sure I could survive but I won’t have to deal with that, now that you’re back in my life.”

Mark’s voice was infinitely tender as he responded.

“My love, I can’t stay long but I need to talk with you about a few things, especially about heaven. Heaven is not what most people imagine. It is, among other things, a place where people who have crossed over can team up with angel
ic spirits
to disrupt evil influences. These teams influence changes on Earth
,
but only if their help is sought.

“If you ask for help and listen for our response we can show you ways to mitigate the impact of evil. I couldn’t let you or Martin live in a world where injustice is unbounded.

Janine’s heart was sinking just as fast as it had soared.

“How do you know and why are you telling me this? Aren’t you going to be with me?”

“Yes, Janine. I am on your team and will always be there for you. I love you with a love that will never die. Never doubt that! Your prayers for my healing were answered.

“
The spiritual journeys which I mentioned to you, during that train ride, were my awakening. Once I had accepted responsibility for what I had caused, I could let go of my guilt. I was restored but not in the way we both expected.”

Mark paused for a moment while Janine absorbed that statement and then went on.

“The healing that took place in my spirit allowed me to choose my destiny. I chose the way of love.”

Hand in hand they wandered down a spongy path lined with bushes that bloomed with roses, lilacs, and daphne. Janine was aware of a warm breeze on her bare skin as they talked about things practical and romantic.

This walk was similar to the one they had taken together along the Detroit riverfront only a few weeks earlier, except that now the surroundings were more beautiful and Mark was more robust.

Everything he brought up was so typical of the man Janine had learned to love: his concern for her well-being
;
wanting to be sure she would be all right emotionally, financially, even sexually.

She assured Mark that she would do her best to make good decisions—for his sake.

Her pledge to use her free time and excess energy on projects aimed at reversing social injustices and especially those that would interest Mark, seemed to make him very happy. Then Mark turned to go, uttering his parting words.

“If you are attentive, you will never have to go far to find signs of my presence. Look for me.”

That sweet, blessed smile of his spread over Mark’s face and the refracted light passed through the cosmos, lighting up her world for a few seconds.

With a sudden jolt, comprehension dimmed that light. When she awoke, crying, Janine knew that Mark had been with her, crossing the veil between their worlds to have a final conversation.

She
even
remembered asking him if he would have the planned surgery, now that he was back. She had withdrawn the question after it dawned on her that he would no longer need any type of medical care. He was through with that body.