The journey home was one of the worst I’d ever undertaken; I was in grief and I was frightened and confused. Only the image of my loved ones, Prim and Andrea, kept me from sinking into an invisible whimpering heap on the pavement. This can’t be death, I repeatedly told myself, this can’t be the consequence of dying, the next stage, the step through the door; this couldn’t be the after-death existence most of us hoped for. If it was, where were all the other souls? If I was a ghost, where were all those who had preceded me? Anyway, I didn’t feel like a ghost. Disembodied maybe, but I certainly had not left this place on earth. Where was the Big Judgement those nuns in junior school had promised me (or, more truthfully, threatened me with)? Where was the eternal peace and joy we were supposed to expect, and where was God’s all-embracing love? Or was He having a laugh? (Yep, by now a little anger was creeping in and that was no bad thing—somehow it gave me a bit more focus.)
I went on, at one moment boiling with rage, the next tearful with despair. Never had I felt so alone. I longed to be with my wife and daughter again and I kept willing myself to be home, hoping that the willing would work as it always had before, so that just the thought of Prim and Andrea inside our house would take me there instantly as though the mere desire would act like some futuristic transporter vehicle, a Star Trek machine without the electronics and dazzling light particles. It wasn’t to be though and I wandered the streets like (literally again) some lost soul.
Nevertheless, I arrived home more swiftly than if I’d been plodding along with real legs and feet, and no tiredness accompanied the effort. I stood by the stone post at the bottom of our short driveway and looked at the house, waiting, not to catch my breath, which was totally unnecessary, but to relish the moment. I felt relieved and at the same time flushed with anticipation.
Oddly, there was a light on in an upstairs window despite the hour. It came from Prim’s bedroom.
15
It must have been the non-thinking, the sheer reaction, that got me into my daughter’s bedroom so swiftly. One moment I was standing by the wall post, the next I was gliding up the driveway to the entrance (my feet skimming inches above the ground) and had passed through the sturdy wooden barrier that was the front door and in a flash was on my way upstairs.* I didn’t so much climb the stairs as sail right up them, finding myself outside Prim’s open bedroom door without further thought.
*Let me just tell you about going through a closed door or walclass="underline"
You don’t just flow through in an easy, fluid movement like a ghost does it in a movie. What happens is that for an instant you are part of that substance, be it wood, stone or cloth. With the last you become part of the fabric itself, a piece of the weave; with wood you’re the very grain; with stone you’re part of the dust that makes it. You mix with the atoms, integrate with them, become unified until you move beyond. It’s more or less the same when you pass through a living body, only then you also become part of its memories and metaphysical nature; but more of that later.
I have no idea why I paused there—perhaps I was preparing myself for another shock—but pause I did. No, now I think about it, it was more of an involuntary hesitation than a deliberate halt, for I could hear a familiar soothing voice. It could be that I expected both Prim and my wife to glimpse me in this new and surprising state, for I hadn’t yet learned enough about my condition to know how it might affect others. In OBE I’d always been invisible to people, but now the rules might have changed dramatically. Some people do see ghosts, don’t they? Especially when they’ve had some physical connection. I truly did not want to scare my wife and daughter. But then, was I a ghost? True enough, I appeared to be dead, my body wasn’t breathing anymore (despite its incredibly ruined state I had checked for any signs of breathing or heartbeat back in the hotel room), but I really did… not… feel… dead! It was becoming a mantra for me.
Andrea’s soft-spoken words encouraged me to enter. The room was lit by a colourful Winnie the Pooh lamp, a gentle glow that only tempered the shadows, rather than banishing them completely. Beneath the lamp on the pretty bedside cabinet stood Prim’s little blue puffer, placed on the very edge so that it was within easy reach. Our daughter had suffered her first asthma attack more than a year ago and it almost broke my heart to know she was always so afraid of having another (she’d had four more since the first one) that the Ventolin spray was always close at hand, especially during the night. Some kids had their own personal security blanket; my little girl had her inhaler. I stood in the doorway watching for a long difficult moment. Andrea was sitting on the bed, with Primrose cradled in one arm, pillows propped up behind them. Her other hand stroked our daughter comfortingly as Andrea continued to speak in that low, calming voice.
“It was just a nasty old dream, darling,” she was saying. “Nothing’s happened to Daddy, I promise you.”
In her arms, Prim clutched Snowy, her favourite teddy bear whose fur used to be pure white but was now faded to a light yellowish grey. I’d given her Snowy on her third birthday.
“But he didn’t answer the phone, Mummy.” Light glistened off cheeks that were still not dry from earlier tears.
“I know, but it was very late and Daddy has been working very hard. He was probably sound asleep.”
“You tried his mobile too.”
“Yes, but it was switched off.”
“He always keeps it by the bed.”
“The hotel would already have a phone right next to the bed. He wouldn’t need his mobile.”
“Then why didn’t he hear the hotel phone?”
“Because he must be exhausted. You know how hard Daddy is to wake up when he’s been working too hard.”
“But I’m afraid, Mummy.”
“I know, Prim, but there’s no need. I’ll ring again first thing in the morning. You’ll see, he’ll answer it then and wonder what the fuss is about.”
“In the dream he was very lost.”
“You always get anxious when Daddy’s away. Remember when you cried because you thought he’d fallen down some stairs? That was a long time ago, wasn’t it? And when he got home, nothing at all had happened to him, had it?”
I remembered the incident. While it was true that nothing had happened to me physically, it was an afternoon when I’d spontaneously gone out-of-body while sitting at my desk and half-falling asleep. I’d been surprised to find myself in this other realm without any warning and had had no control whatsoever. In the OBE I was at the top of a tall building, standing on the very edge of the roof (it was a familiar building some miles away from my office and I had no idea how I’d got there) and about to take a step forward. Well, whereas if in control I would have glided to a safer place, this time I fell. Really it was no more than what sometimes occurs in a normal dream, where you seem to take a wrong step off a pavement and the sudden jolt wakes you, but in this instance the location was a little more serious. And, as if in a normal dream, I was instantly awake, my whole body no doubt jerking with surprise, and I almost did fall off my chair, but I managed to save myself in time. Fortunately, I was alone in the office I shared with Oliver, or I would have had to endure his laughter and teasing for the rest of the afternoon. My heart was beating a little faster than usual, but otherwise I was okay; it was only later I learned that around the same time—about four in the afternoon—Primrose, who was belted up in the back of Andrea’s little Peugeot on their way home from school, had given a small scream and burst into tears, proclaiming that her daddy had fallen down some stairs and hurt himself.