#165 Between Life and Death

by Heidi Heim

Chemo does nasty things to a body. My first round catapulted me into a funk not even Prozac could touch. The second took mercy on my mood, but turned my scalp into a dried-up riverbed. I refused the third round.

My mother used to laugh recounting how Father McPherson had paced the hospital waiting room the day I was born. Her labor lasted 36 hours. Father wore a hole in his shoe.

Now, 35 years later, he sits beside my hospital bed, his tall, gaunt figure framed by yellow walls and paintings of crimson poppies. The hospice I now call home is at once the most cheerful, and the most dismal, place I’ve ever encountered.

“What’s it like?”

His eyes meet mine. “Death?”

“Beyond.”

A gentle grin spreads across his face. The crevices around his mouth deepen. He leans back in his chair and strokes his balding pate. “A meadow bathed in warmth, a kaleidoscope of rainbows.”

I want to respond, but a barrier has come between us.

I’m not in bed anymore. I’m a passenger on a driverless bus, in my pocket a one-way ticket to Death.

From the fingerprint-stained window, I see the Beyond. Only it’s not like Father McPherson said. There is no burst of brilliance. There is only emptiness.

Father leans forward, questioning. I want to tell him what it’s really like, but then I remember how his eyes shone when he spoke of the meadow, the colors.

I draw a labored breath. “It’s lovely.”