I knew that I needed to say good-bye to my family and friends. Technically speaking, my good-byes weren’t really good-byes. I just wanted my family members and friends to know that I was okay, that I still existed somehow, and that I appreciated all they’d given to me. I felt like I had done them wrong in the sense that I didn’t give them a chance to say good-bye to me. I was ready, but they weren’t. That’s where I’d kind of fucked up. Looking back now, I realize that I was already helping people when I was saying my good-byes.
Connecting to the people I love became easy after I died. The emotional distance I had at the beginning that I found so damn useful disappeared with that body bag after it was zipped up. I didn’t need that distance anymore. In a way, it was great because now (you know how we talk about using our five senses to emotionally and physically connect) as a spirit, I not only had those five senses but I also had this whole other palette of emotions that I could use to reach out and connect. I could sense people’s feelings and hear their thoughts. I realized this new power was coming from me and that it was a natural sense, just like sight or hearing or smell but unique to my new plane of existence, whatever that was. It was part of me, and it made me feel bigger and better and happier. Because I could tap into each one of my family members’ and friends’ feelings and thoughts, I decided to tailor every good-bye to how each person would have liked to experience it and what would be best for them. They couldn’t see or hear me, but I hoped that somehow it would soak in. And it turned out that it did.
It wasn’t like I was stuck with just picking up the phone and going, “Hey, man. I love you. Take care. Bye,” or like I stood in front of them with a bullhorn and shouted. I just sat next to them and talked, and since they processed everything I said energetically, I could give them the sensation or gut feeling that everything was going to be okay. I told each of them that I loved them, that I was leaving, and that I was going to be fine.
When I think back on who I said my good-byes to and when, I realized that memories from every relationship were different for me. It’s not like when I was human and could think back into the past. It seemed like everything was stuck in the present and that there was no past or future—like I was experiencing my entire relationship with each person simultaneously, but it wasn’t overwhelming or scary; it just felt right. Later, I would learn that where I am, time is not linear like it is on Earth, so that means that memory and timelines and shit work differently for me than they do for you, but if I try to line it up in Earth time, here’s basically how it went:
I said bye to my sisters and brother first. I started with Kristina. I visited her at her house the night of my death. She was lying on her couch with the covers pulled up around her chin, trying to digest the events of that day. I could see that she was both shaken and in shock from processing everything that had just happened. At the same time, she was numb. Can you be numb and shocked at the same time? I didn’t really know, but that’s how it seemed to me.
Kristina wasn’t angry with me right after my death, though. That would come later. It was fucking horrible to sense that from her when it did. She felt some remorse, too, because right before my death, I’d texted her to tell her that Mom had given me her old iPhone and I was so proud and excited, but she felt a little annoyed with me and didn’t text me back. That would have been the last time I talked to her.
Because she was the oldest, I always thought of Kristina as “Miss Fix It,” but not in a bad way. She cares for everybody like it’s her responsibility, but she loves doing it. She didn’t want to believe that my death was real because I think she felt that if she did, it meant that it somehow would have been her job to save me, even though that would have been impossible. I don’t think she wanted to believe that I’d died by taking my life either.
Her grief was absent and disconnected so she could protect herself from it. That absence was like a wall all around her, so it made it hard for me to get close to her. I also realized that if I did, it would make things too real for her, and she would shut down. I had to use the happy memories of the things we’d done together so she wouldn’t just concentrate on what had just happened and get overwhelmed.
Once I was able to reach Kristina through those memories, I sat beside her and told her all the things she’d taught me. That’s what I did with everyone I said good-bye to. I told them what I’d learned from them. With all my sisters and my brother, I learned that whenever they got on my nerves or when I didn’t feel like they were in my corner that it wasn’t about me; it was about their own shit. I think that’s how it works with pretty much everybody, you know? Anyway, with Kristina, I told her that she taught me how you have to protect your heart. You can’t always walk around with it fully exposed like I had. Some people who protect their hearts are misunderstood. They’re seen as cool or aloof, but they can still feel deeply, and Kristina does.
After Kristina, I said good-bye to my sister Michelle. I remember that right after my death, she was pacing in front of my mom, who was sitting on the couch in our living room. Then Michelle announced that I was in a better place and walked off. I guess that came from her denial. Later that night, I went to her apartment and sat down next to her on her bed. I could tell she was wondering why she couldn’t have fixed me and why she couldn’t solve the problem that had unfolded in front of her. She wanted to turn back the clock and erase all the times we’d fought and all the times she’d shut me out.
I nicknamed Michelle “the grave digger” because she kind of had to dig me up in her mind after I was dead to fully process that I was gone. Besides Maria and my mom, she was the only one who saw me after I’d shot myself, so she had to see that graphic image again in her mind and talk about it out loud to know that it was real. That was the only way she could wrap her head around what had happened. Maybe she thought that would give her closure.
Michelle was in so much shock that I had to pretty much sit on top of her and hold her down to help her control her thoughts about me and eventually be okay with saying good-bye. While I was with her, I noticed she was thinking about dozens of thoughts at once, most of them in the form of “why?” Why hadn’t she seen it coming? Why hadn’t she been more aware? There were also lots of hows, whats, and whens floating around in her head: How did I come to the decision to leave? How was she going to be able to move forward? How was she going to talk about it with other people, like what was appropriate to talk about and what wasn’t? Michelle also wanted to know when I’d started thinking about it and when I’d come to the conclusion to take my own life. What made it especially hard for her was that we had had a falling out a few weeks before, so fleeting moments of guilt and regret washed over her while I sat with her. Then when each of those moments passed, she eventually realized that it wasn’t about her, and I think that that helped her a lot.
While I sat with Michelle, I learned a ton from her. We had been very close and had spent a lot of time together, so I told her that she’d taught me what it’s like to be a real friend, but I also learned that, with friendships, you can sometimes tear each other apart, and that can be the path to sewing yourself together into a new and better you.
Next came Lukas. I hung around him in the backyard for a while and then followed him back into the house. I walked by his side and followed him up to his bedroom. When he sat down on his bed, I sat next to him. Other than my mom, he was more in shock than anyone else. It was so overwhelming for him that he couldn’t even get a sense of how his body felt.
I could sense that the energy of every cell in Lukas’s body was quivering and vibrating at a higher-than-normal rate. He couldn’t believe I was dead. Lukas thinks very analytically, and he couldn’t find the logic behind what I’d done, so the whole thing didn’t make sense to him. One of his thoughts was, “If Erik can do this, then anyone can.” This made him question the concept of the value of life.
I tried to calm his body down so that his cells wouldn’t vibrate at such a high frequency and so that he could feel okay again. He was numb. He couldn’t feel his emotions; I guess that’s because he’s the kind of guy who feels later, after he’s had a chance to process things. Lukas is the one in the family who wants to feel but tucks everything away instead of fully immersing himself in his emotions. I should have done more of that. I kind of fucked things up for him because my death caused him to stuff his emotions down even more, and that makes me feel like a dick, but I did learn something from the way he handled his feelings, both after my passing and in general: I learned that it’s okay to take your time. Instead of jumping right into the pool, you can walk around the edge and figure out which side you want to jump from. Then you can stick your toe in to test the water. You have to jump into your pool of feelings eventually. With Lukas, he’s about observing things and taking his time before making a decision about something or deciding what to feel. I thanked him for teaching me that.
Then came my sister Annika. A couple of hours after I died, she went upstairs to her bedroom, and I sat beside her. I could see that she was trembling and crying. Her energy looked like shattered glass that had been glued back together. Right then, she had no way of mending or counseling herself, so she felt extremely helpless and useless.
I sensed the weight on Annika’s shoulders. She tends to feel responsible for everyone else, and now she felt a responsibility for helping my mom get through the day. Annika didn’t know how she could help her. She didn’t even know if she could, but she knew she had to try, so in spite of her grief, she sacrificed the opportunity to heal herself and immediately concentrated on helping my mom. She wanted to make sure Mom was okay. In fact, right after I died, she got a wet paper towel and gently wiped the blood off of my mom’s hands—the blood that had come from hugging my body. Annika wanted to do something. Anything.
Annika was also pissed. She couldn’t understand why this was happening. She couldn’t believe that I had put her in this situation. She couldn’t believe that I had put anyone she loved in this situation.
As I sat with her, I told her that she needed to take care of herself first. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be in any kind of shape to help anyone else. Taking care of herself meant that she had to love herself enough to put her own needs before anyone else’s. That’s how it works for everyone, not just her. I also told Annika that I wish I had taken better care of her, my baby sister. She was always wiser and more collected than I ever had been. That made her seem like she didn’t need anything from anyone, including me, but now I see that she was just putting on a brave front. She tries to be strong for everyone in the family, but she’s more fragile inside than she lets on. I guess that’s why I’d never reached out to her. I’d had troubles of my own, so that made helping my family members difficult. It kind of made me a selfish asshole sometimes. Depression can do that to a person.
From Annika, I learned that you can’t carry everyone’s burdens like I’d done. Not only had I carried other people’s burdens sometimes but I also had carried my own burdens alone. I could have reached out to somebody so that they could help me carry my load. I thanked Annika for teaching me that, and I hope she continues to learn to lean on the people she loves when she needs to.
Next came Aunt Teri. Poor Aunt Teri. She lives in California and doesn’t know her way around the city, and she was the one who drove my mom and Michelle home when Maria called them to let them know she’d heard something that sounded like a gunshot from my room. Then when Maria screamed into the phone after seeing me dead, things got crazy. I don’t know how she kept it together enough to get home. She almost seemed like she was out of her body. All that day and for a few days after my death, Aunt Teri handled pretty much everything. She was the one who was in control. She arranged for the cleanup crew to come over; she helped us choose songs for the funeral; and she even helped figure out what to write on my grave marker. Aunt Teri’s used to being in control of everything. She’s usually pretty fucking good at it, too, but this was one time things didn’t go according to her plans. Don’t worry. I’m getting to the point soon. This is just the backstory.
So, on the day I died, after the cleanup crew left, Aunt Teri lay down on one of the couches in the den and went to sleep. While she was dreaming, I felt her sorrow. She felt so bad that she hadn’t been able to convince me to go out for lunch with everyone. She thought that maybe if she had insisted, then I would have gone with them—and then I wouldn’t be dead. How could she live with that? I told her that I was okay and that I was free. That was my good-bye to her.
With Aunt Teri, my good-bye was about cutting her loose. That’s how she understands a good-bye. You take a person to the airport, drive them to the passenger drop-off lane, give them a hug, and say, “Have a nice trip.” Then you drive home. One thing I learned from Aunt Teri is that sometimes you have to run away in order to find yourself. She’d done that when she was young. She’d left home to escape her abusive parents, and by doing so, she had been able to build a life for herself and get to know the person she was with the pain peeled away. So she taught me that running away isn’t always a bad thing. You sometimes have to leave the situation to understand who you are, and that takes courage.
Then I said good-bye to Uncle Jim. I love Jimbo. Uncle Jim tried to teach me how to fish, but that didn’t work out too well because I was too fucking impatient. I wanted to catch a fifteen-pound bass a few seconds after tossing my line in the water, but to be honest, I think I’d only caught one fish in my life, and it probably weighed under a pound. Looking back, I’m glad he tried to teach me all the same, though.
I didn’t visit Jim until a couple of days later. He was at his apartment, sitting outside on the back porch, smoking. He looked detached, disconnected from everything. I knew he was too far removed from the world to feel my presence, but I sat in the chair next to him anyway. Even though he was shut off from everything, Uncle Jim was still consumed with sorrow, which is weird for him because he’s not a big feeler. He was so confused. He kept thinking over and over again, “Was this really the news? Is this all real?” Things didn’t really sink in for him until much later. That’s just how grief works sometimes.
I thanked Uncle Jim for all the things he’d taught me. He never puts his foot in his mouth, so that taught me that it’s sometimes necessary to bite your tongue. He has a lot of integrity and a strong work ethic, and that taught me that there are things you have to do in life because it’s the right thing to do, even if you don’t really want to. Sometimes you have to do some really fucked-up shit. Sometimes it’s just boring or it’s a grind or it’s uncomfortable, but you have to do it and get through it all the same.
When I was with Uncle Jim, I said good-bye to Aunt Laura too. She was pacing nervously in front of him, chain-smoking. She liked her cigs. I wanted to comfort her, so every once in a while I’d get up from my chair and walk alongside her. She was out of control, full of panic and shock at the same time. I thought she was about to explode. She was also scared because she thought that if this had happened to me, who’d be next? She’s pretty morbid and thinks about death a lot anyway.
Aunt Laura was my friend, my confidante, my smoking buddy. Sometimes she’d sneak me a cigarette now and then, warning me not to say a word to my mom and dad. Both of us didn’t want to get busted.
In Aunt Laura, I saw myself: misunderstood. Once I was out of my body, I learned things about her that I didn’t know when I was alive. I could see all the struggles she had gone through, and I commiserated with her because my life had sucked too. But then I thought, “If she got through them—and her struggles were darker, tougher—then why couldn’t I get through mine?” I didn’t yet understand that my struggles on Earth were part of my larger purpose, but from Aunt Laura, I still learned what strength is. I thanked her for that and said good-bye.
After Aunt Laura came Maria. Maria didn’t like that she had been the first one to find me and that she had been involved in some way in my exit. I definitely can’t blame her for that; it couldn’t have been easy. She’d taken care of me since I was eighteen months old, so she was like a second mother. I visited her early on the morning after my death. She was back at her house on her knees, praying. I could see her whole body shaking. Tears were running down her cheeks. She was so sad. Just so sad. It was the type of sadness that made me want to cry with her. I wanted to comfort her, so I kneeled next to her and held her hand. Even though she was trembling and crying, I could feel that she was still a force to be reckoned with. I felt this peace and strength inside her that I hadn’t recognized before.
While I was with her, she talked out loud to me. She says these out-loud prayers sometimes, and she was in the middle of one of those when I came to her. I think her prayers were how she handled her grief. It’s like we had a conversation, in a way. First she told me that things would be okay. She had this sense of knowing that I would be fine. She also thought about what she could have done if she had gotten there faster and if she had reacted differently. She wished that she had noticed something when she was in my room making up my bed, even though I think we both knew that there really was nothing she could have said or done in those moments to change the situation.
I told Maria how grateful I was that she’d taught me about playfulness and about letting go, even when you don’t feel like it. I also told her how much I appreciated how she would patiently let me talk to her about things she wasn’t interested in. Her English was not very good when I was growing up, so sometimes she would pretend like she was listening. It meant so much to me that even when she didn’t understand everything I was saying and even though she was busy with her responsibilities in the house, she would take the time and stay with me, like that time I tried to give her directions on how to re-spoke a bicycle wheel. From Maria, I learned that sometimes you have to make sacrifices for the people you care about. I learned that you have to be patient, like her.
I visited a few of my friends the day after my death too. Valentin was in his house, sitting on his bed, talking to himself with his head in his hands. I sat next to him and put my arms around him. Friends are not supposed to make each other feel that fucking way.
Valentin was the one I had spent the most time with the last few months I was alive. He had made those months so great. Valentin could relate to me because he sometimes felt like an outsider too. I wanted him to know that my death was a happy moment, so I made him pick up on the playful personality I’d had when I was around him during the good times we shared. That way, he could feel that it was really me beside him. This made him laugh at inappropriate times about stuff: that I was able to get the hell out of my life before the shit hit the fan, struggling, getting old, things like that. I guess he was thinking, “You lucky bastard” while he was chuckling inside.
See, Valentin had bought the gun I’d used for me because he was twenty-one and I wasn’t. The only reason he’d bought it was because I’d wanted to go to target practice with him. Still, he didn’t pull the trigger. I did. So he shouldn’t feel guilty or responsible. I hope he knows that. As I sat with him, I thanked him for teaching me what trust is, that there are people you can trust and that there are friends that will be able to handle things when they get heavy. Valentin was that person for me.
Then I visited my parents. Pappa came first. Oh, Pappa. There he was, standing in front of the desk in the kitchen. As I stood by his side, I could see that he was closed down, zipped up. His face was flushed, and his feet were tingling. He didn’t want to believe it was real. It was like he was watching a horror movie unfolding in front of him. The thing is, a lot of horror movies end up with the bad guy or the swamp monster or whatever getting killed and everyone that was in danger being saved, so the movie ends on a happy note. That wasn’t the way it was that day, and Pappa didn’t understand why he couldn’t rewrite the ending.
His energy felt elastic, but I still couldn’t get past his barriers to access it. It was like trying to get into a tent without unzipping the flap first. He was different because I’d been able to merge my energy with everybody else’s during my good-byes. I had to wait until he was angry because when he was, he could open up that tent. You have to get big when you’re angry. Anger is actually a really vulnerable emotion that opens you up a little bit. Part of his anger was because he felt helpless and useless. Pappa’s used to controlling everything and protecting everyone he loves. Because he couldn’t control whether his son would live or die, he sort of crumbled and became a little boy again.
I always wanted to have a connection with Pappa, but he didn’t let me into his world as much as I wanted him to. After I died, I still had that human pain of not having the connection I wanted, but I didn’t need his approval anymore. I didn’t need his attention. Instead, I got his attention by loving him. It was an “I forgive you” love. It was an “everything is okay between us” love. I really couldn’t give him that when I was alive. I always felt Pappa wasn’t open to that kind of thing anyway. He’s Norwegian, so I guess it’s a cultural thing too. Scandinavians don’t usually get all emotional and gooey like people in some other countries do. Not that that’s bad or anything. It’s just how they are.
I realized two things then about Pappa that I hadn’t realized before. I used to think he was trying to teach me lessons to keep me in line and that’s what made the distance between us, but he just wanted to protect me, and the only way he knew how to do that was by talking “at” me instead of “with” me. He didn’t know how to get involved. He thought I was supposed to know things or behave a certain way even though nobody had taught me or shown me how, so when I didn’t act or think the way he thought I should, he’d fuss at me. It was his way of trying to protect me from myself.
Even though I first came to him when he was standing in the kitchen that day, it wasn’t until the day after I died that I decided to say good-bye to Pappa. I came to him in a dream. In the dream, he was standing by his kickass Ford F-450 Super Duty. I loved that fucking truck. I stood behind him and told him I was okay. He asked me why I had wanted to leave, and I leaned to the right, into his energy, and said, “This is how I felt before.” Immersed in my energy, he was overcome by all the emotions I felt when I was alive: the despair, the confusion, the sadness, and the hopelessness. I had to pull away from him to get him out of that horrible black cloud. Then I leaned to the left, back into his energy, and said, “This is how I feel now.” When I did that, he felt my happiness, my relief, and my sense of freedom. That was my way of telling him that I’m okay—that I’m actually better than okay.
From Pappa, I learned why he didn’t always want me to do certain things with him, like riding motorcycles. When I was alive, I thought he just didn’t want to be around me. Now I know that he was teaching me that you can’t always do whatever the hell you want. Sometimes you have to have someone there to pull you back. Pappa understood that in order to learn boundaries and safety, you have to do things at a slower pace. You can’t just jump out of a plane without a parachute. Even though I wanted to have a shared hobby with him, like racing motorcycles, I couldn’t jump on the bike and race around the track with what little experience I had. It was a good thing, too, because I’m clumsy and easily distracted, like my mom.
Of everyone in my immediate family, I visited my mom last because I had to work up the courage for it. Visiting everyone else in the family first gave me more strength to be in the presence of her grief. I was timid saying good-bye to her in particular because her emotions were so overwhelming. She wasn’t even in her body. She was just a lost shell of herself. That made her completely numb, so I don’t think she could have had any feelings just then.
While the cleanup crew was finishing up upstairs, she was in her bedroom, lying on her side. I sat next to her for a while. When I finally mustered up the courage to say good-bye—when I went to embrace her and to show her that I was around and that I was okay—she was too far removed to hear my words or feel my presence. She was deep inside her head, trying to understand what the fuck had just happened. See, my mom’s a doctor. Her main calling in life is to help fix, heal, and cure, and for her, it’s like putting the pieces of a puzzle together. She sees her patients as a big puzzle with a lot of pieces, so she doesn’t just try to figure out what’s wrong with them; she wants to know about all other the other pieces of their puzzle, like if there was anything in their personal life that might affect their health: their relationships, their family life, their emotional health, their financial troubles, and things like that. As a doctor, that makes her pretty unique. She’s like the unicorn of doctors.
Once she understands the whole puzzle, my mom tries to make her patients well by helping them put all their broken pieces together in the right place. She wanted to do the same thing with me, but she wasn’t seeing all my shattered pieces for what they were in those moments after my death; she was just focused on wanting to put me back together again, even though that wasn’t possible. She wanted to put the puzzle of my death together, not take it apart. She thought that putting the pieces together would help her, kind of like sewing the arms, the legs, the eyes, and the mouth back onto a torn-up doll.
What she really needed to do was take the puzzle apart and get to know each piece instead of immediately try to patch things back together. That’s the only way she’d be able to better understand my death and everything surrounding it. She needed to see that piece that represented the “why,” the piece that represented the fact that my death was my choice, not something she could have prevented, the piece that represented the state of mind I needed to be in in order for me to pull the trigger, and the piece that represented her acceptance that death is a transition, not a permanent separation. That’s how she would eventually start the healing process, but she wasn’t there yet. If she had been in that space, it would have been easier for me to get through to her, but it was too early. Every time I tried to get close to her and say my good-bye, it triggered the terror all over again. Terror mixed with numbness. Not a pretty thing. That’s why I couldn’t sit down next to her for very long when she was lying in her bedroom that day.
When you’re human and you’re in tune with what’s going on—call it “centered” or whatever—it’s like you have one pipe that your emotions are flowing through, nice and simple. After my death, it was as if my mom sprouted a dozen leaks in that pipe, and I couldn’t connect to the pipe and stop up those leaks. My mom was trying to use all these crazy emotions spilling around in her to understand my death, but she didn’t even know where she was going or where she was coming from in order to begin. At the same time, she was trying to deal with the immense grief and pain of being the mom who couldn’t save her own child.
Once I was dead, I got to see all of the struggles she had gone through from childhood on. I even got to see what struggles she was going to have in the future. Seeing that made me want to figure out how to make her whole again. I knew that I had to wait until she woke up and reached out for answers. I had to wait until she was ready to talk about her experience, and I had to wait until she was ready to see that I’m still living and I’m okay.
I tried to get her to feel that when I was in her room with her, but she wasn’t feeling anything. That’s not to say she didn’t have any emotions, because I already described the ones she was dealing with at that moment, but she was too numb to feel them in a way that made sense to her. See my dilemma? I fucking wanted to wake her up, but I couldn’t touch her. I wanted to tell her I was okay, but she couldn’t hear me. It was beyond frustrating. Times like those are when it really sucks being a spirit. I knew that it sucked even before I really knew I was a spirit.
From my mom, I understood what a soul mate is. I could literally see the core connection we had. It was unbreakable. Still is. From her, I learned that bonds like ours can’t be broken. That’s love. Everyone else I said good-bye to represented a different flavor of love, and she was one of those flavors too. She was my favorite flavor.
After I finished my good-byes to my family in Houston, I thought about my mom’s father, Poppi, because he was the one who didn’t believe in any of this life-after-death shit I was experiencing, and he’s old. He should have died a long time ago, and I didn’t want him to die thinking there was nothing after death. Nobody else was going to bring it up to him, so why not put it right into his fucking lap?
I wanted to show him that there is a life or a consciousness or whatever you want to call it after you die, even though I was still a very young spirit and didn’t fully understand how all that shit worked yet. So I showed up at his house. I simply thought about him, and there I was. He was in a chair in his living room. I stood in front of him, and he didn’t see me. I stood there longer, and he still didn’t see me. So I turned myself into the age when he remembered me best—when I was little. He saw me then. He reacted first with horror, fear, and confusion. I could feel those emotions rolling off of him in waves. He was thinking, “Have I lost my mind? This can’t be real. Am I dying? Am I dying?”
I knew he couldn’t explain it, and I wanted him to really, really know it was real. I wanted Poppi to feel it. I suddenly knew I had to crawl into his lap like I used to do when I was a kid. So I did, and I looked into his eyes. I told him that everything was fine and that I loved him. Then I told him good-bye. I touched his face, and he watched me. He didn’t talk back to me. He made some sounds, though. It was funny to see his reaction, and that fed me even more light, more energy, because I cracked open his mind a little bit. He didn’t hug me or anything, but just from seeing his shock, it felt like I had done the right thing. It felt so good. In retrospect, I see that I was helping him face his fears, and I planted that seed in his mind that things don’t end at death.
Later, he called my mom and told her about the whole experience. She knew Poppi was stubborn as shit when it came to his beliefs, so that caused the first spark of hope in her that maybe I wasn’t gone for good. I mean, fuck, the first words he said to her after she came crying to his house were, “Sorry, Elisa, but Erik is going to turn to dust.” He had a point (that is pretty much what happened to my physical body, after all), but who says that to a grieving mother, man? Anyway, that big, knotted mass of skepticism and doubt started to unwind like a ball of yarn inside both Poppi and Mom for the very first time.
Last, I went to see Pappa’s father, Bestefar. I sat next to him and put my hand on his leg. He gave me the feeling that he felt me. It’s like when you have that sense that you’re being watched but you can’t put your finger on why. In him, I felt a sadness that was there even before I died and even before my grandmother Bestemor died. He’s carried that sadness around for a long time. From him, I learned that it’s important to let go of certain things. Sometimes he didn’t do that. He’s lost a lot of people in his life, and he’s afraid that if he lets go of the grief, he’ll lose the memory of that person. I tried to hug him and comfort him. I told him that everything was going to be okay. I really wanted him to know how much I loved and appreciated him because I didn’t get to say that much to him before.
I guess I just wanted both of my grandfathers to know that there’s more to the death process than just that—dying. Neither of them believed that there is something greater after death, and it isn’t just something sad and to be dreaded. I also knew that I was going to see them on the other side before I saw the rest of my family.
Looking back, I realize I was already helping people when I was saying my good-byes. That was the beginning of my role as a guide, and that’s sweet. With each person I visited, I just got happier and happier. When I was finished—I don’t really know how to say this—I started to get who I was for the first time since that moment in my room with the gun. I started to feel complete. I could look at my relationships with everyone without my brain or body getting in the way, and that pure knowing touched me on a level I didn’t even know I had.