I wrote a short story today, and I want to share it with you. It is longer than my usual blog posts, and for that I apologize. I hope you enjoy it.
The Guide
“Hi, I’m here to escort you to the other side.”
Samantha shook her head and rubbed her eyes. “Who are you, and where am I?” she asked.
“I’m Dennis, and you are in the transitional plane. This is where you go when you die. I’m a guide. I’ll take you through to the other side.”
“I have a meeting this morning. I need to make breakfast for my husband. What are you talking about?” Samantha was getting more and more upset as she talked.
This was Dennis’ least favorite kind of client. It was so much easier with the ones who expected to die, or who died violently and remembered the last moments. The clients that died in their sleep were always the most difficult to convince that they were really dead.
“Let’s sit down and have a cup of coffee, and I’ll explain everything to you.” Suddenly, they were in a coffee shop setting, where minutes before, they had been in what looked like the lobby of a high end hotel.
“You had an aneurysm in your brain, and while you were sleeping last night, it ruptured. At a point in the night, your husband woke up and discovered you were not breathing. He called 911, and started CPR, but you were already dead. Your Mom and Dad, and his Mom and Dad are with him. Your siblings are headed into town. This is the afterlife. I’m a guide. I greet people when they arrive, and take them across this plane, to the other side.” Dennis offered Samantha a box of tissues, as she was crying.
“I’m twenty-eight. I have my whole life ahead of me. We didn’t even get to have children yet. I can’t be dead.”
Dennis took Samantha’s hand. “In a few minutes, you will calm down. The energy of this place soothes all negative emotions. The calm will last for a while, and then emotions will come back. When you miss someone too much, there will be opportunities to see them, and to send them messages. Not everyone in the first life is receptive to messages, but if your people are you will enjoy visiting their dreams, and leaving them keepsakes. The transition is always hardest for people who don’t expect to die, and have no warning. Just take deep breaths, it will all be okay.”
Samantha felt her emotions receding, and a peculiar calm was taking over. While her rational mind was still working to process everything, her emotional mind seemed to be shut down. “I must be dreaming. Wait till I tell Mike about this when I wake up. I’ve had some vivid dreams before, but this is a doozy.”
Dennis offered Samantha a cup of coffee, fixed exactly how she liked it. So many of his clients thought their first consciousness in the transition plane was a dream, and he let them. The first couple of times he had tried to reinforce the truth, but after a few clients, he realized they would come to the realization on their own as they made their way across the plane. Samantha would be one of those clients.
“This coffee is perfect. I don’t remember having a dream before where I ate and drank and experienced flavor.”
“When we finish our coffee, we’ll start the journey to the other side. Only guides stay in the transitional plane. All others leave first life, spend as much time as they need to in the plane, and then pass on through to the other side.”
Samantha was still trying to figure out where this strange dream came from, but she was also intrigued by the story this Dennis guy was spinning.
“So, do you know how long I’ll be in the transitional plane?” Dennis shook his head no.
“I get notified to meet a client at a location. Then I get instructions one at a time. After the coffee shop, I’m supposed to take you through the park, and stop at the farm. The walk will take a little while, but we’ll go slow so you can adjust to the environment.”
Samantha hoped she would remember every detail of this dream to tell Mike in the morning. Maybe she could even write it down.
As Dennis and Samantha left the coffee shop, Samantha looked around her. They appeared to be on a Main Street with shops and cafes and hotels. There were other people walking around, and everyone seemed to be with just one other person, but none of the people together looked like couples, more like two strangers, just like her and Dennis. Wierd. As they got to the end of the street, the businesses gave way to houses, and then the houses gave way to green space. Samantha supposed this was the park that Dennis had mentioned. The weather was perfect, warm but not hot, with a nice breeze. The sun felt good, again, warm but not hot. The flower gardens in this park were amazing. Samantha was never one to enjoy silence so she tried to figure out a good way to start a conversation.
“The flowers are gorgeous.” That felt like a good opening. “Yes they are, and I never get tired of them. The flowers change for each client, so that the newcomers always see an assortment that makes them feel good.” Samantha was still trying to process that information when they arrived at a large gate with an intercom.
Dennis pushed a button and a voice responded. “Dennis is here with Samantha Fremont.” “Great, we’ve been expecting you. We’ll see you in the Green House.”
“The have a greenhouse? Is that where they cultivate the flowers?” Dennis smiled, “Not a greenhouse, the Green House. You’ll see in a minute.”
Inside the gate was a farm, with a couple of barns, and about seven houses. Each house was painted in a solid color. The houses were red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, like a rainbow.
Samantha smiled back. “I get it now, the Green House. What are we here for?” Dennis smiled. “You’ll see in a minute, and I think you’ll like it.”
As Dennis opened the door of the Green House, Samantha noticed that it smelled like her Mom and Dad’s house. Kind of a cinnamon and vanilla smell. “It smells like my Mom and Dad’s.” Then Samantha noticed that it also looked like the house she had grown up in. The furniture was the same as when she was in grade school. This dream was getting stranger and stranger. Samantha was looking around the room and noticing how exactly replicated her childhood home was when she noticed the grey and white cat sitting in the window.
“Stardust! What are you doing here?” The cat turned at the sound of Samantha’s voice and jumped down from the window. She ran over and started rubbing against Samantha’s legs, and meowing to be picked up. Samantha picked the cat up, and the two rubbed noses, and then Stardust put her paws on Samantha’s shoulders and nuzzled her head into Samantha’s neck.
“Oh baby! I’ve missed you so much for so long. I don’t understand.” Samantha was starting to get that this wasn’t a dream.
“Most of my clients find their first happiness on this side when they are reunited with their pets. As a guide, I have been assigned to greet a pet and bring them to the farm. Pets make the transition so much more readily than humans. They are happy to wait, as long as they are fed and have a nice place to live and some affection. I brought Stardust over. She was a little shy at first, but she warmed right up. She’s been waiting for you.”
“She’s younger than when she died. And thinner.” Samantha was surprised at how calmly she was processing information. It was strange that being dead was starting to feel normal.
“Everyone returns to their best self in the transitional plane. You were twenty-eight when you died, so you will probably stay twenty-eight. Most people’s best self is somewhere between twenty-eight and forty-eight. We have a few people who present on this side in the sixties and seventies, because they felt they were their best self at that age. How someone presents isn’t up to the Guardian. It is up to the person. So, however you liked yourself best, that is how you present. Children stay children, because children usually like themselves just fine.”
“You said you were taking me through the transitional plane to the other side, the afterlife. What happens to people there? How do they look and feel?”
“I don’t know, Samantha, I’ve never been there.”
“How come? Why not?”
“I have never asked those questions. When I died, I was met by Theo, a guide. He told me that I had been chosen to be a guide, and I went into training here on the transitional plane. I’ve been a guide ever since.”
“But don’t you wonder about what is on the other side? About the afterlife?”
“Not really. Other guides have left this plane and moved on, and I suppose if the Guardian wants me to move on I will. No reason to wonder about it. I am always comfortable. There is always food to eat, a comfortable bed to sleep in, friends to visit with when I’m not working. On earth, I was always worried about how I was going to pay my bills, and if I was going to lose my job. Here, I worry about nothing. I enjoy meeting new people and helping them transition. It is a very nice existence. I’m happier than I ever was on earth.”
Samantha took a minute to process that.
“What was your life on earth like? Did you have family?”
“No family. My mom was a drug addict. Never knew who my dad was. I was in foster care my whole life. She died when I was eight, but by then, I was considered unadoptable. I went in the army at eighteen, gave that twenty years. Then I bounced around. Bartending, tour guide (ironic, I know), waiter, anything to make a few bucks. I liked being around people, but never made close friends. I got diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia at forty-five, and was dead in less than two months. Got all my medical care through the VA, lucky for me I was a veteran, otherwise, I’d have been out of luck. They at least kept me comfortable until it was over.”
“Wow, Dennis. I never knew anybody without family before. I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about, Samantha. The world is full of people like me. Unattached and just getting by. This afterlife is so much better. No disease, no pain, no danger. You can eat all you like and stay a perfect weight. You can drink all you like and never get drunk or feel hungover. No sunburn or indigestion. Nothing to make you ever feel bad. And connections. I have more friends on the transitional plane than I ever did on earth. And I still get to be around people.”
Samantha was still petting Stardust, and feeling better about where she was. “What’s next?”
“Next I’m supposed to take you to the Habitat. I just got word that you are going to meet one of the guides there and both of you will go to the other side. This is a new one for me. I never had two clients at the same time, and I never escorted a guide. Let’s go.”
“Do I have to leave Stardust?”
“No, you and she will be together forever now. Don’t worry, you can carry her, or she can walk. She won’t stray from you in the transitional plane. That is just how it works.”
When Samantha and Dennis left the Green House, they headed right back out through the gate they entered, and headed back towards the park. The day was still perfect, although the sun was lower in the sky. Dennis answered Samantha before she asked.
“The sky mimics the sky on earth, to help people feel comfortable during transition. Time is a little more fluid when you have been here a while, like I have. Basically, I will experience daytime whenever I am with a client, and it is always evening when I finish. I have fun with other guides until night, sleep and repeat.”
While Dennis had been talking they walked about halfway through the park before turning down a different road. Along this road were more houses, like the ones that had been near the main street with the shops and cafes. They came to a small well kept house with a big front porch.
“Here we are. We call this the Habitat. It is the control center for the guides. This is where I came for my training when I arrived. This is where we are meeting the other client.” Dennis wondered which guide was going to be moving on.
There was a man on the far side of the room when they entered. He turned when he heard the door open. “Uncle Rick!” Samantha ran across the room and embraced the man.
“Hey Sunshine! Nice to meet you! I’ve been watching you all these years, and you’re even prettier in person.”
Rick smiled at Dennis over Samantha’s head. “Hey Dennis. I guess you are the guide taking us both to the other side. Samantha is my sister Denise’s girl. I died while Denise was pregnant.”
“Uncle Rick, Mom always told me I would meet you someday in Heaven. I guess she was right.”
“We’re not exactly in Heaven, sweetheart. We’re in the transitional plane. But I did visit your Mom in a dream last night, and tell her we are together. So when Mike called her, I think she knew. Maybe we can visit her again soon.”
Dennis recognized a fleeting sadness. “I’ll miss you Eric. You’ve been here since I got here. We’ve had some good times together.”
“I’ll miss you too, Den. Maybe I’ll see you some day on the other side. I just got back from a delivery. A three year old boy. He was excited about everything. Never cried or was afraid. I took him to the farm where we picked up a puppy, never saw anything cuter than that boy and that puppy together. When I dropped them off at the gate to the afterlife, it looked like there was a big crowd to meet him. I feel good that my last client was so happy to be here.”
Samantha looked puzzled. “If I got Stardust back, where did the puppy come from? Won’t someone else be looking for him?”
“Ah, Sam. Some puppies are euthanized, or die naturally because there is no one to care for them. The Guardian matches them up with the children that died wanting a puppy. This little guy had been battling cancer for most of his life. The guides don’t know much about the other side, but the one thing we do know is that when children go to the afterlife, they go to people who love children, and who either miss their own children, or never got the chance to have children. The Guardian knew it would be too hard for the guides to drop children off not knowing that they would be well cared for. As often as I have escorted children through the plane, I’ve always fallen a little in love with each one.”
“Me, too, Eric. The children are both the easiest and the hardest clients. I need to get you two moving. We’re due at the gate.”
As Dennis, Rick and Samantha walked back through the park and past the farm on towards the gate, Samantha felt the last sense of strangeness leave her body and her mind. The afterlife was waiting, and she felt excited to see what it held for her. Maybe there would be a baby soon that needed her. She thought of Mike, and how she wished she could say goodbye properly.
Dennis answered her as if she had spoken. “The Guardian will let you say goodbye to Mike when the time is right. I told you, you will get to visit, and leave impressions. The more open he is to believing that you can still reach him, the more likely it is that he will know you have been in contact. It is an imperfect system because the humans in first life have a hard time accepting. It is part of the reason that children transition so naturally. They are used to visiting with people in the afterlife, and to them coming here is just like visiting a favorite relative.”
Samantha thought about her Mom, and how often Mom had said she’d had a visit or a message from Rick. “I know my Mom will be fine, because she never lost contact with Uncle Rick. I hope she can convince Mike. I don’t want him to be sad and hurting.”
“Unless Denise has changed an awful lot since I left earth, she’ll convince him. She was like a terrier with a bone as a girl.”
Samantha laughed. “She still is. Thanks for reminding me, Uncle Rick.”
The had arrived at the gate. Stardust pawed Samantha’s leg to be picked up. Dennis shook hands with Rick, and then nodded to Samantha. “Good luck in the afterlife. It was an honor to be your guide.” And with that, the gate swung open and shut, with Dennis on the transitional plane, and Samantha, Stardust and Eric in the afterlife.
Dennis made his way back to town, where he enjoyed a night of darts and camaraderie at the bar watching football.
“Hi, I’m here to escort you to the other side.”
“Dang, I was hoping to see Mary right away. I’ve been waiting eighteen years. Who are you?”
“I’m Dennis, and I’m your guide through the transitional plane. Nice to meet you Henry. I’ll get you to Mary as quickly as I can.”
