The Color of Heaven (6 page)

My eyes flew open as wel , and for the next hour, I lay in bed, tossing and turning, sinking deeper and deeper into a painful wel of memories as I

replayed those horrors in my mind. I knew I had to stop thinking about her death, stop worrying about where she was now – if she was anywhere at

al – and focus instead on the joy she had brought to my life.

I forced myself to recal those special years during remission, when I began to see the world with new eyes. For a while, I had understood and

cherished the extraordinary gift of my existence on this planet, and I relished each new day with my daughter.

I wondered what she would think if she could see me now, wal owing in my grief. Alone.

I imagined she would grieve for me in return.

That single thought prompted me to climb out of bed. I boiled an egg for breakfast, took a long shower, then cal ed my sister and asked if I could

come and visit for a few days. I wanted to talk about the possibility of going back to work. I had no interest in writing – at least not yet – but I thought I might be able to do some freelance editing.

“That sounds like a great idea,” Jen said. “Joe and I were just talking about you yesterday. And Megan, of course. We miss you. Please come. How

soon can you be here?”

“Just give me an hour to pack.”

True to my word, exactly one hour later, I was buttoning up my sheepskin coat and tossing my suitcase into the back of my compact SUV.

As I drove out of the city on that mild winter day, I could feel Megan’s presence in the back seat. Every so often, I glanced in the rearview mirror, and I could see her smiling at me.

The only time she spoke was to remind me to turn north onto the 684.

She stayed with me until I passed Hartford, then quietly departed and left me to find my own way to my sister’s house in Manchester.

o0o

Not long after I crossed the border into New Hampshire, the temperature plummeted. If I had been out walking, I would have felt it on my cheeks.

The chil would have entered my throat and lungs, but I was strapped tightly into the cozy confines of my vehicle with the heat blasting out of the

dashboard vents, and was therefore shielded from the conditions outside.

I wil always wonder what brought that deer out onto the road just as the puddles from the melting snow turned to ice. I saw her out of the corner of my eye, gal oping onto the pavement, and my whole body went rigid.

Wrenching the steering wheel left to avoid her, I hit the brakes at the same time, which was of course the worst thing I could have done.

The car whipped around 180 degrees, so I was now facing the oncoming headlights from the vehicles traveling behind me. My tires skimmed

sideways across the pavement toward the shoulder of the road.

I remember everything in excruciating detail, the noise especial y, as my car rol ed five times down the steep embankment. Glass shattered and

smashed. Steel col apsed. The world spun in dizzying circles in front of my eyes, so I shut them and gripped the steering wheel hard, bracing my

body against the jarring impact as the roof col apsed over the passenger side and the windows blew out.

Down I went, tumbling and bouncing over the rocks like a stone skipping across water.

Then al at once, it was over.

There was only white noise in my ears, then the thunderous sound of my heartbeat.

I opened my eyes to find myself hanging upside down in my seatbelt, with the side of my head wedged up against the roof.

The engine was stil running. Other sounds emerged. Music was playing on the radio – an old favorite song of mine from the 80’s,
The Killing Time
, which was ironic, but in that heart-stopping moment, I was not quite so reflective. Al I could think of was getting out of there.

Panic hit me. Hard. I felt trapped, frantic to escape, and began to thrash about.

I groped for the red button on the seatbelt buckle, but my hands were shaking so violently I couldn’t push it.

My breaths came faster and faster.

I cried out, but no one heard.

Then suddenly, out of nowhere, a whip cracked. The vehicle shuddered.

I froze and tried to see past the smashed windshield in front of me. Everything outside the car was pure white, covered in snow.

If only I knew where I was. If only I could see something beyond the broken glass!

But it didn’t matter what I could, or could not, see. I knew what was happening...

My car was sitting on its roof, resting on a frozen lake. The crack of the whip was the sound of the ice breaking.

Creak… Groan…

My SUV shifted and began to slowly tip sideways.

Large chunks of ice and bone-numbing swel s of water poured in through the blown-out windows as I sank into the frigid February water. The shock

of the cold took my breath away.

Frantical y, I struggled with the belt buckle and managed, at last, to free myself, just as the last few pockets of air bubbled up to the surface.

I was completely submerged.

It was dark and murky down below. I couldn’t tel which way was up, nor could I swim through the window, for a large shard of ice had become

wedged there. I shoved at it with my shoulder, but to no avail. Then it occurred to me to open the door.

I groped for the handle and pushed it open against the weight of the water. Meanwhile, my body was going numb in the sub-zero temperature.

I swam toward the light, but col ided with a thick ceiling of ice. No matter how hard I pounded against it, I couldn’t break through, so I swam,

searching for the hole through which I entered.

At last, I broke the surface and sucked in a great, gasping gulp of air while I recklessly splashed about.

I struggled to clamber up onto the frozen surface, but my body seemed made of lead. My teeth were clicking together. I began to shiver violently,

and then, by some miracle, I stopped feeling the cold. My hands went numb as I made one last attempt to claw my way up onto the ice.

Exhausted and disheartened, I had no more fight left in me. My brain was shutting down. Al I wanted to do was sleep.

I held on for as long as I could until my eyes fel closed. The next thing I knew I was fal ing…

Down, down…

Slowly sinking toward my capsized car.

I settled lightly on the steel undercarriage, beside the muffler.

The rest of this makes no sense to me as I recal it, for my eyes were closed –
I was not conscious
– yet I was able to see what was happening from a location outside my body.

The convulsions and violent jerking of my legs were disturbing to watch. It was a seizure caused by the lack of oxygen to my brain. I understood this with great clarity as I watched myself twitch and final y go stil .

Afterwards, I floated there for about twenty minutes, wondering if I should stay or go for help.

In the end, I decided to stay, because I just couldn’t bring myself to leave my body alone, in the cold, dark water.

A short while later, I squinted through the murky depths and blinked a few times, for I thought I saw Megan swimming toward me. How was this

possible? As she drew closer, I realized that it was not a hal ucination. It real y was my daughter, and I was no longer alone.

o0o

A heavy splash startled me. I looked up and saw oodles of tiny, sparkly bubbles floating around a shifting black shape. It took me a few seconds to

grasp that it was a scuba diver with flippers and a tank.

I darted quickly out of the way.

With quiet fascination, I watched as the diver scooped me up into his arms and carried me to the surface.

Megan was gone by then. She had said what she needed to say.

The ambulance ride was strange. I looked quite dead on the stretcher – my skin was ashen and my lips were blue – but no one was trying to revive

me with CPR or anything like that. They were only trying to keep me warm.

The female paramedic listened to my heart every minute or so with a stethoscope and kept shaking her head, but she told her partner that I wasn’t

real y dead until I was
warm
and dead. She also mentioned that her own dog had been accidental y shot in the woods, trapped in snow for over an hour, but had made a ful recovery.

I was surprised by that. I wanted to ask her more about it, but I knew she couldn’t hear me.

The noise of the siren was startling. I wished the driver would shut it off.

At last, we arrived at the hospital. The ambulance doors flew open. The paramedics pul ed my stretcher from the vehicle and the wheels extended

to the pavement.

Suddenly there was a team of nurses and doctors al around me. With great efficiency, they rushed me inside.

o0o

According to Wikipedia, clinical death is “the medical term for cessation of blood circulation and breathing, the two necessary criteria to sustain

life. It occurs when the heart stops beating in a regular rhythm, a condition cal ed cardiac arrest.”

That’s what happened to me, almost a year after Megan passed from this world. I stopped breathing when I sank to the bottom of the lake, and I

died there.

My circumstances, however, were outside the norm, for the reduced temperature of the water caused my blood pressure to drop, and al my

systems slowed. Everything except for my heart and lungs continued to function, including my neurological activity – which didn’t exactly explain why I was able to sit beside the paramedics in the ambulance and witness everything they said and did.

I wasn’t questioning that, however. At least not while it was happening. It had al felt quite normal.

I was not in any pain, and the panic was gone. It had subsided completely after I left my body. I was no longer afraid of dying. Al I felt was an intense yearning to go back to the lake and search for Megan. I wanted to see her again, desperately so, but I just couldn’t seem to stray too far from my

poor lifeless form on the gurney.

o0o

As soon as I was wheeled into the emergency department, the doctors and nurses set about bringing my body temperature back to normal, then

they began aggressive cardiopulmonary resuscitation. I watched al of it from an elevated location in the corner of the room, just below the ceiling.

The head emergency doctor placed the defibril ator paddles on my chest and said, “
Clear
!”

Everyone paused and watched the monitor.

Perhaps that’s when I re-entered my body. I can’t be sure, but I do recal that I lost my breath for a moment. I zoomed through the air like a bul et.

Here, my memory fails me. Al I can say is that I was no longer an out-of-body spectator, staring down at myself on the gurney. There was only

darkness and silence, and I could think of nothing but what Megan had said to me at the bottom of the lake.

“
There are things you need to do, Mommy. Questions you need to ask. You can’t be done yet. You need to forgive someone
.”

Who doesn’t, I ask you?

Perhaps you should think about that, while you’re healthy enough to do something about it.

Take my advice. Don’t wait until you’re dead.

Going Home

On the day I left the hospital, the air was misty, the sky overcast. I passed through the hospital’s sliding glass doors, crossed to the parking lot, and looked up at the clouds, which were hanging very low.

Surely this was some sort of miracle. How else could I explain that I had died and seen Megan in the lake, and that she had spoken to me?

Michael would never believe it. He’d probably cal me insane, which was why I had no intention of ever tel ing him. Besides, I had business to attend to. Things I needed to sort out back home.

An ambulance siren wailed somewhere nearby. It rang in my ears.

I wondered if I should have cal ed my sister to drive me to Camden. Surely I was in no condition to take care of myself.

Or maybe I should have cal ed my father...

No. I wasn’t ready to see him. At least not yet. There were things I needed to do first. Questions I needed to ask. Megan had been very clear on that point.

A blue sedan approached me, and only then did I realize I was standing in the middle of the parking lot. I stepped gingerly to the side, but the driver behind the wheel – an elderly man with thick glasses and white hair – took no notice of me as he searched for an empty parking space, spotted

one, and careful y pul ed into it.

I watched him get out of his car, shut the door behind him, and shuffle to the hospital entrance. He disappeared through the glass doors, and again,

I was alone.

Panic came upon me suddenly. My heart jolted. I couldn’t breathe.

Glancing back at the hospital entrance, I was half tempted to return and tel the nurses I wasn’t ready to leave yet. I had been through a terrible

ordeal and probably required some sort of anxiety medication, but I resisted the urge to go back inside. I may not have known what my future held,

or how in the world I was going to navigate through it, but I did know one thing: I needed to return to the place where I had once been happy, where I had been a hopeful, optimistic person before the ground gave way under my feet.

I needed to return to my childhood home in Camden, where I would find the mother who had abandoned me twenty-three years ago. I needed to ask

her the question I’d always wanted to ask, but had avoided al my life.

I clung to the hope that her answer would save me.

Megan told me it would.

Camden, Maine

The morning broke in a menacing shade of grey, and the heavy scent of spring rain hung thickly in the air.

Eyes downcast, I walked through the downtown core of the smal seaside vil age where I had spent the early years of my childhood. Camden had

been my home until I was fourteen, but after my mother left town, Dad, Jen and I did the same. It’s not surprising that Mom had now returned to our