A Symphony of Cicadas

Twelve



The next several weeks, John made every effort to be present in the home. He knew he only had a few weeks left with Sam, and he wanted to make it right. It was during this time that I felt him distance himself from me. For him, this meant he pushed my image away whenever I entered his thoughts. For me, it meant there were a lot more barriers, a lot more hurdles to jump through just to get close to him. And when I did get close, I felt like I was fighting against the wind, struggling from being blown away as he repelled me away like the wrong side of a magnet. I couldn’t touch him, hear his thoughts, or even be in the same room as him whenever he worked to push me away.

It was different when I listened in to those who didn’t know me or even think to keep their minds closed to me. I could dance in their thoughts, sometimes even appearing to them as a flash of an image they were either aware of or not. Their inner dialogue was the stuff from which stories were made, and I would often sit for hours just listening to them talk within their heads.

Did I turn off the stove? I’m sure I turned off the stove. I picked up the pot of oatmeal before it burned, and then, oh yes, there it is. I turned off the stove. The cat is probably licking away the oatmeal left in the pot by now. That’s going to be a glued on mess to clean up when I get home, I know it. Maybe the cat will be hungry enough to lick it clean. That damn cat. I wonder if Peter will know it was me if I leave that door open and let him accidentally run outside.

The physical effects of John’s resistance caught me off guard. It surprised me that a connection like this existed where the living had an effect on the dead, even if it was keeping me away. My natural reaction was that of a jealous girlfriend, trying everything to keep myself in his thoughts in an exhausting array of tricks. I’d learned how to break through the barrier that separated his world from mine, allowing me the power to move objects that existed in the land of the living. Of course, such a feat took every amount of concentration I had. Thus far I had only succeeded in being able to knock things down, using gravity to help my cause along. But I knocked items down in front of him every chance I got – the one photo he kept of all four of us on the mantle, one of my books that was still in the room despite his sweep through in the first week of my death, and the most impressive of all – dropping the remote so that it turned to my favorite movie.

That one took immense planning. On a day when he was gone and I could move about without worrying about being repelled out of the house, I flipped through the TV listing book they published every Sunday in the newspaper. There it was in black and white, the title of my favorite movie, “Made in Heaven.”

I had made him watch the movie with me often, forcing him to endure two hours of my laughing and crying, sometimes at the same time, as the hearts of the characters on screen were broken over and over. If that movie appeared on the TV screen now, there was no way he’d be able to ignore me.

I memorized the time of when the movie was playing, and concentrated my hardest on staying within a human timeline rather than the non-existence of time in my own reality. And then I just prayed he’d be there at the right moment.

All the other schemes of opening him up to my memory – the photo, the book, and anything else of mine I could place in his path - only resulted in John picking up the wayward item and depositing it in Joey’s room, keeping the thought of me at bay with impressive strength. But the remote control trick gave him pause, the memory of me filling the room as Elmo, the main character of the movie, filled the screen. John sank to the couch as Elmo sang to the radio in his car, the book “Mike and Me” flung next to him on the passenger seat.

Rachel, just give me time, he thought, as if he knew I could hear him. His resistance gone without warning, I found myself cast inside of him with a lurch. I should have known, having planned this little action with such deliberation. But still, it caught me off guard. I’d only expected a smile, a memory, only one brief moment of recognition for all the effort I put into this plan. Instead I could feel the way his hair moved across my forehead, his breath in my mouth, the beat of his heart in my chest. I was wrapped up in his smell, intoxicated on the familiar scent I adored.

I danced in the memories that flashed through his head, enticing him to keep me there with him as he let his imagination run wild. But then he thought of Sam and I felt the barrier rising up again. I screamed in pain as it fought against me.

I haven’t forgotten you. I love you more than my own life. But I also love my son, and I need to be with him now.

With that final thought, I was flung from his body, from his home, from the city, at thousands of miles an hour. I was thrown with the force of a speck of dust flicked from an otherwise-flawless suit jacket. I found myself propelled through space with such velocity I was sure I was on fire.

My pride wounded, I realized there was no fighting back. I needed to stay away, at least for a little while. I’d sewn myself too deep into the fabric of John and Sam’s life. I had become so involved, even from the stance of a mere fly on the wall, I sometimes forgot I was even dead.

The thought of walking away from them terrified me. Would John end up forgetting me? Would he learn to live without me? Would I become a memory from a past life and would he begin something new with - and the next thought almost paralyzed me - someone new?

But I knew staying away was the only answer. And out of respect for the man I loved and the relationship he had with his son, there was no other choice but to let go for now. So I fought every fiber in my being that ached to be near him. Instead, I spent a few days of human time in space, practicing my own form of meditation by closing my mind to John. I focused on the wonderment that existed in the pure nothingness that held me up; surrounded by stars and meteors, planets and black holes, experiencing the coppery taste that existed in the lack of atmosphere, and the siren’s call of the heavens that bordered the delicious quiet of the universe and could only be heard if I didn’t move at all.

And I thought of Joey.

Despite my disbelief in Heaven in those early days of my death, I had grown to believe that there really was something out there. I could sense a stirring within me at the faint trembling notes that existed in the corners of space, and I felt its pull whenever I let go of my hold on the living long enough to exist in the world of the dead. And I believed Joey was there.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” I watched myself ask six-year-old Joey. We were at the breakfast table back then, and in a journey through time, I was watching now from the leaves of the ficus I had inherited from my Grandma Bonnie after she died.

“An astronaut!” he exclaimed. He grinned, revealing his two missing front teeth before diving into the Cheerios in front of him. I had forgotten how young his voice once was, how his hair had once been a sandy blonde before darkening to the milky caramel it was before he left the earth.

“Why an astronaut?” I asked him. “Is it because you want to see if the moon is made of cheese? Or maybe to see if the cow jumped over the moon?” I asked him in all seriousness, though a hint of a smile pulled at the corner of my mouth.

“No!” he giggled. “Those things aren’t true; those are just jokes!” he informed me, and I feigned shock that I had been misinformed.

“I had no idea! What will you see if you travel to space?” I asked him. And in his young wisdom, he described to me a vast universe with giant planets that traveled around the same sun as us, moving in a silent journey at varying speeds with tiny spheres of moons that traveled around them like our cats that swirled around our ankles in the morning before I opened their cans of food. He told me of the meteors that enter our atmosphere, how they are smaller than the palms of our hands but fifty times faster than the speed of a bullet. And he talked of the more impressive comets, the dirty snowballs of the sky that orbit the solar system and hold glimpses of early life. I listened then in the kitchen, and now in the folds of the ficus, with amazement as my young kindergartener explained the secrets of the universe, giving me information I’d learned over the course of time as well as new insight to a mysterious horizon that existed beyond the minuscule earth we lived upon.

“How do you know so much?” I exclaimed, no longer feigning astonishment.

“I saw it on the Discovery Channel,” he said before finishing his last bite of cereal and bringing the bowl to his mouth to drink the rest of the milk. “Can I be excused?” he asked me, and I nodded with a reminder to brush his teeth.

“Are you out there now?” I asked Joey out loud, back to the nothing of space that held more than even I could see in my limitless existence. “Can you see me from Heaven?” I whispered, the sound hanging in front of me without echo.

I became aware of the possibilities that lay before me as I floated free from my earthbound body. The space that Joey once described to me was out here, and I had the ability to see it all. Earth, in the far away distance, shone at me like a star in the sky. The giant orb of Jupiter moved in a slow rotation next to me, the gasses swirling in an ever-moving sphere of colors. Beyond that were much smaller planets in their own slow-moving journey around the sun, a star that looked much smaller from this far away than it did from the comfort of Earth. And all around me were particles of rock and dust floating beside me, sparkling from the faraway sun.

But what caught my eye the most was the trail of faded stars that led further than I could see, winding toward the edges of the galaxy and beyond. My curiosity was working overtime, and I turned to move toward the Milky Way. I picked up speed as I went along, traveling faster and faster until I was plummeting through space at full throttle. If I were more than just a spirit, I was sure I’d have a tail of fire as I moved forward with increasing velocity.

I came close enough to view the stars that made up the Milky Way, still millions of miles away, and moved parallel with it. I passed planet after planet, the space around me feeling colder as I moved further away from the sun. I saw the glow ahead of me, still thousands of miles away. It was like a sheet that wrapped around space, invisible above and behind me as I traveled onward. But as I got closer, the glow got brighter. I picked up speed and flew forward with all my strength. It could only be the edge of the galaxy. Even closer, I could see space rock moving toward the glow. But with shock, I saw each rock sucked through, an invisible wind grabbing hold and propelling it into a storm that swirled around the galaxy.

I was going too fast to stop, or so I thought. Had I controlled my fears long enough to think with clarity, I would have remembered that I had no limits, that I could think myself away from this place in just a moment. But as I streamed towards the edge, all I could think of was being swept into a vortex I wouldn’t be able to get out of. This is my hell, I thought. I’m going to be stuck here forever in a blender because I chose to leave Earth behind.

It was no use. I closed my eyes and waited for the end. And then I hit it. Literally. I bounced off the glowing edge of the galaxy as if it were a solid wall, propelled backward through the weightlessness of space with as much force as when I was moving forward. As I flew back, I remembered the power I had. Within a thought, I was back at the edge, examining the glowing wall without touching it. I could see the velocity of movement that existed just beyond it, pulling at anything that managed to pass through the wall I had hit with great force. Trembling, I brought my hand up towards the glow, reaching forward with some hesitation. Even as space particles passed through the barrier without effort, my hand pressed firm against it. There was no give, regardless of the amount of force I used against it.

That’s as far as you go.

I turned my head around, startled at the voice that spoke when I had been alone for so long. No one was there. Once again I raised my hand towards the glow.

Rachel, you will go no further.

This time it was unmistakable. And rather than being a voice near me, it was inside my head.

“Who are you?” I yelled out. Even as I listened for an answer, I admired how the glowing barrier in front of me vibrated with my voice, carrying my sound over it with a ripple of light. I waited for a reply, but received none. What I did hear was the sounds of the Heavens, or what I perceived to be the Heavens. They were closer this time, but muffled. It sounded like they were just on the other side of the barrier, but I couldn’t be sure. I wondered how long I’d been tuning them out that I was only aware of them now. I strained my ears, trying to make out the words. But it was like listening to sound above water while holding your breath below.

The barrier began to glow brighter, the wind on the other side forming a churning tornado as I both heard its thundering roar and saw all that it carried moving faster against the invisible wall. It started to pulse, and I backed up in fear of what was about to occur. Just as I was thinking of turning around and heading back to where I came from, I was engulfed in a flash of light, shocked by an explosion that went straight through me like a bolt of electricity.

And then I started to fall.