I had never been a “Good Catholic”. In college my friend Kitty went to Mass
nearly every Sunday. I went with
her about once a quarter but I always admired her commitment to our faith. As a young adult, I rarely went to Mass
except on Christmas and Easter with my family. Things did not change when I met Gordie. He grew up in a non-religious family
and he did not even belong to a religion.
But despite not going to church, I considered myself a Catholic and
believed that there was indeed a higher power, likely God, and that an after life
did exist, probably Heaven.
When Gordie and I got engaged, I never considered anything
but a Catholic wedding. We had to
attain permission from the Bishop of Denver to get married in a Catholic church
since Gordie was not Catholic but permission was granted as long as I was
confirmed before the wedding. I
had not been confirmed in highschool, it was just something my parents never
enforced. So, as we were preparing
for our wedding, I went to classes on Sundays and was confirmed a few months
before we married. Gordie and I
also attended all of the pre-marital classes required by the Colorado Catholic
church. I still remember his
horror at some of the material discussed in our Family Planning class. The material was a bit graphic. Additionally, in the handouts there was
a sentence that said masturbation was considered a sin. Gordie looked at me, laughed, and said
“that seals, it, I am going to hell”.
I laughed and told him to be quiet.
Before Nathan was born, Gordie and I tried to go to church more
regularly. Gordie and I had agreed
to raise our children Catholic so I wanted to get started living a more
Catholic lifestyle. Once Nathan
came though we soon realized how difficult it was to take a baby and then a
toddler to church. Once again, we were
“bad Catholics” in that we did not attend Church more than a few times a
year. However, we certainly did
acknowledge Catholicism in our home through reading the Bible to Nathan and
through teaching him about God.
This way of life continued when Wyatt was born. Although we did not worship the way
Catholics are supposed to, we, including Gordie, believed in God, heaven, and the
teachings of the Bible.
After Gordie’s death, my faith crumbled. Although every night, without
exception, the boys and I prayed for Gordie in Heaven, my beliefs were
gone. It started out as simply
questioning everything and desperately searching for information. In the weeks after Gordie died, I would
be on my computer until midnight or later googling “Is there a God”, “Proof
that Heaven exists”, “Spiritual Afterlife”. Someone bought me the book “Heaven is For Real” and I read
all the parts describing heaven during one late night. I talked to people I knew, including
some Widows I had met.
“Do you believe?” I would ask them.
Most of them told me “Without a doubt” and I think they
really did but a close friend of mine was more practical and honest. She had a hard time understanding how
people give God credit for all the good things in the world but do not blame
him for all of the suffering. My
ultimate question was more selfish and simple. What kind of God would do this to two little boys who are
ages 6 and 2? What kind of God
would take the Father of our family in such a random and unexplained way?
But I kept coming back to something that happened the night
after he died. Something that made
me wonder about the after life and also kind of freaked me out. The boys were
still sleeping with me in my room at my parents’ house. I had put them to bed before me and by
the time I was ready to go to bed, they were fast asleep. I got into bed, turned out the light
and lay in the dark replaying the same questions I had asked the night
before.
What the hell had just
happened?
How could my husband
be dead?
How could my sons lose
their Daddy at such a young age?
How did Gordie get
into the pool and how was he not able to get out?
How was I going to
raise these boys on my own?
What was I going to
tell Nathan in the morning?
Where are we going to
live? I can’t go back to that place.
What if we had stayed
in Colorado? This would not have
happened.
How will I ever go
back to work?
Who will take care of
the boys when I have to go back to work?
Did Gordie suffer?
I was lying in the dark looking at the ceiling swimming in
these questions when the night light switched off. I sat up and looked at it.
I guess the bulb burnt
out I thought.
A few seconds later, it switched back on. I sat back up and looked at it.
What the fuck? I
thought.
I lay back down and a few seconds later, it switched back
off. The strange thing is that it
was not a flicker, or the kind of flickering on and off when a bulb is loose or
burning out. The light was
decisively turning on and off.
I lay in the darkness and before I knew it I whispered out
loud, “are you here Gordie?”
The light switched back on.
Holy shit I
thought and then I just started talking to him. I’m not a person who believes in ghosts and have never, ever
felt the spirit of someone, but I truly felt like I was supposed to be talking
to Gordie. I told him I did not understand how our life together, how the boys
lives, and how my life could possibly turn out this way. I begged him to tell me how he died. And then I told Gordie that I loved him
and missed him.
There was a point in the conversation where I wondered if he
was still there. I said, “are you
still there Gordie?” and the light turned off.
“OK…I guess you are still there” I said and just kept
talking to him.
The light switched back on a few minutes later and I got
this overwhelming sense that I should unplug the light.
“Gordie,” I said “I feel like you are telling me to unplug
the light for some reason, so that’s what I am going to do”.
I got out of bed, unplugged the light, and put it on the
ground. I went back to bed,
whispered, “I love you Suggs” and tried to go to sleep.
That night I had one of two dreams I would have about Gordie
for the next eight months. In the
dream, Gordie and I were talking about going our separate ways. There was no other context to the dream
but us standing there talking about going separate ways. But as he turned to go, I reached out
to him and grabbed his arm. He
turned to me and said “I loved you from the first minute I saw you”. And then I woke up.
The next morning, I checked the light. Nothing was wrong with it. I plugged it back in and that night
turned it on when I put the boys to bed.
It worked perfectly fine.
In fact, it would still be working, with the same bulb, over a year
later.
