I can see how it was for her waiting for her children and husband to come in and say goodbye to her.
She was resolute now. Her pain held at bay for their sake. Baggage packed and set aside by the door.
Set aside.
Tears on their faces like a punch in her gut. She knew she had to, but she didn’t really want to leave them.
Quietly from the place he stood waiting, her father said, “Go ahead. Take your time. Do it right.”
She nodded and hugged each of them, kissing them goodbye, from where she lay. Ordered them to take care of one another. Promised she’d see them soon.
That slight exercise exhausted her and she lay back against the pillows feeling defeated, thinking, ‘How am I ever going to travel this way?’
She didn’t say it aloud, but her father heard her and patted her arm. “You’ll see. It will all be okay. It will be easy. Trust me.”
She did.
And when he took her limp hand, she felt his strength surge through her such that it drew her up both to sitting and then, at his slight tug, to bouncing off the bed but not touching down on the carpet.
Not touching down.
No. She was floating above the carpet as she had in so many dreams before.
Grinning when he floated a little higher and tugged her after, she climbed the air like an imaginary staircase, bouncing up each step.
Three feet up, she finally looked back down… and saw herself, her husband, her children… a pang of disjointed regret amid the tide of ebullience that enclosed her now.
She looked terrible without her makeup. In fact, she was certain she wouldn’t look so good even with it. Her face was so wane. Her once youthful body all worn-out.
“It’ll be okay,” her father said again. “Trust me.”
She did.
The trust turned to white light, prismatic and beautiful, eclipsing sorrow.
They didn’t leave the world so much as fade from it, like waking from a dream, friends and pets there to greet her with hugs and kisses, familiar vistas, but all of them beautiful.
Time had been her albatross in the faded dream called Life, everything done with its weight in mind like a stone in the heart.
Now it didn’t matter.
In what seemed years to them and moments to her, the others would join her. It would be okay. Better than okay.
She could laugh now at what she’d once spent time in fearing. There was nothing to fear. Nothing, and no Time.
The nightmares that chase us in Life are nothing more than flitting shadows on the ever-expanding walls of a greater Reality.
Time to leave the halo deck and get on with Real Life, dancing in the sparkling light.
Ampbreia's space 
This gave me goose-bumps and tears.
You wrote it so beautifully.
Wish I could “like” it more than once!
HUGS!!!
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Thank you. I wrote that with Cheryln at Xanga in mind. I didn’t know her well but used to read her blog now and then. She was a young mother that always seemed very upbeat and lively despite the fact of having a lot of health problems. Back in April, I think it was, she wrote about having recovered from pneumonia and how miraculously her cancer was in remission, her tumors all vanished overnight when her church had a prayer vigil for her. My grandmother had had brain tumors vanish in the same way many years before she finally died of other causes. Anyway, Cherylyn’s last post in June was still very hopeful and upbeat and she was still feeling good so I was very surprised to see the note from her family on her blog when I visited last week, announcing that she had died peacefully in her sleep. Anyone is lucky who can be among family when they go, have their chance to say goodbye, and go quietly in her sleep. I think it was just the way she wanted it.
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Oh! 😦 I didn’t know her on Xanga…but I’m so so SO sorry to hear about her death! 😦 I bet she was an amazing person! I will be thinking of her family as I know they will miss her.
Your story reminded me of a friend of mine who died in college. Too young.
HUGS!!!
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