Where do we go when we die?

                                                            -By Kelly James Carmody (with help)

Hello, my name is Kelly James. My folks had wanted to name me Connor, but they were admonished by my father’s mom that the kids would tease me when I got in school and they would call me Connie, a girl’s name.  So, they named me Kelly, go figure.

I was born in 1978 to these charming young parents that did not have a pot to piss in or even a decent window to throw it out. Both were dreamy eyed idealists, which was apparently at the time was a systemic problem for most High School graduating classes in the early 1970’s.  They both graduated despite the organized chaos that modular scheduling had created, and both went on to get a two-year junior college degree in nursing. I came along a few years later. That is for a later story. I need to fill you in about how my parents met.  They created my story.

My dad the last of 7 children was born into a 1950’s struggling lower middle-class Irish family on the North side of St. Paul in central Minnesota. His Dad was a poorly educated, 3^rd generation Irish who worked two jobs to support his family: by day a commercial milkman, by night the Constable on Patrol (C.O.P.) for Grey Cloud Island.  When my Dad was in first grade, they moved out of the city to Grey Cloud Township, a small community of 150 homes nestled on a bucolic island situated on the muddy Mississippi river just south of the twin cities.

My mom was the second in line of four children born into an upper middle-class family in one of those classic sprawling neighborhood developments with brightly colored “model homes” to choose from. All the homes were connected by freshly laid sidewalks studded with Dutch Elm saplings on the lanes, circles, cult de sacs, and boulevards as if they had grown up overnight. Every street was named for a tree genus in Minnesota and the main road into the community had brick pedestals standing guard on either side as if it were a star’s home in Beverly Hills. A sign on the left column read “Welcome to Woodland Hills”, on the right column the sign read:” your neighborhood of the future”.   My dad used to say the houses were made from ticky-tacky and they all looked just the same.

Growing up with privilege has its advantages and disadvantages. My parents grew up in totally different worlds; my mom did not worry about much growing up and you might say a bit spoiled from the wave of upper middle-class luxury hitting the early mid 1960’s society. My Dad’s parents shopped at thrift stores and the kids wore hand- me- downs.  My Mom went to a genuinely nice and affluent private parochial school for girls where they had to wear uniforms and attend church every morning. My dad went to public school, with brown bag cold lunches; he had to walk to school after completing the morning chores on the farm.

Moving to “the island” for my Dad was the best thing that could have happened in his life. They had lived in the city on a busy main road in rundown house that supported 6 children at home, one child had to be institutionalized for severe mental retardation as they could not take care of him. Their home had several dogs, countless cats, and a few free-range chickens. There was no carpeting anywhere in the home.  Walking into the kitchen you could instantly see its history. You could see evidence of the tar paper backing that lay beneath the gray and maroon design of the cheap linoleum that resembled a once shiny bowling ball.  Peeking through the surface of the high use areas were little black half-moon crescents like unrecognized smiles. They dotted the periphery of the floor beneath each of the legs of the curved chrome tubes of the yellow vinyl chairs.  The rubber floor protectors had long worn down on the legs of all the chairs around the table. Each leg a bare metal tube carving its signature into the floors pathetic (asbestos laden) floor covering.

On the far end of the table where grandpa sat you could see on the floor how far back, he had to be from the table because of his immense belly. He had to pivot the chair back and to the right to release his belly from the table after supper each night; he literally had to push himself away from the table 😊. On the floor he left his signature for the new owners to see (recoil), but a floor leaves a story.

 You could look around the table and see everyone signature on the floor except for his mom’s, in fact the floor protectors still had some good rubber on them.  I think she only sat down in the kitchen on Thanksgiving when Grandpa sliced the turkey once a year, otherwise she cooked and served, then did the dishes.

Late night when the kids were in bed, she sat quietly night smoking her Benson & Hedges cigarettes and sipping from a bottle of Tab. Her tired worn index finger would slide absently mindedly up and the down the rough bumpy edges of the bottle of Tab which was off limits for anyone else in the house. The tendrils of smoke from her often-forgot cigarette would coalesce and swirl with the tendrils of her invisible daydreams that were emanating from her vacant but lucid green almost catlike eyes. The once sparkling green eyes that had captured my Dad’s father were now faded as the grass in late November and she looked resigned to her task at hand. She was a mom.  Dreaming of what could have been, what should have been, she takes another deep drag off her ciggie-butt crushing it out angrily in the faux gold & green bean bag ash tray and off to bed. Another day in.

My dad’s mom left her signature different from his dads. We all leave our signature wherever we go, different for everyone. Take a dog walking down a quiet street, he will leave his mark on the hydrants, or an expensive rose bush, he cannot help himself it is in his nature. We leave our mark with everything we do and that we say, we cannot help it; it is in our nature.

So, you on earth, when you are grieving a loved one and asking for a sign, dream, or visitation please remember a few things from our perspective that will assist you in that endeavor.

1. We may be in an undetermined rest state
2. We may be preparing for our task or next quest
3. We may be too young in earth time to have created a recognizable signature
4.  We may have returned very quickly *
5. Conditions may not be conducive in your geographic area, no butterflies in the depths of winter; no rainbows at night.
6. Conditions may not be conducive in your mental world, apathy, extreme anxiety, anger, and depression et al have an insulating effect to our connection.
7. Conditions may not be conducive in your spiritual world whether lack of faith, faltering faith, no faith, atheist, agnostic, arrogant, or just an asshole.
8. Conditions may not be conducive in your social world. If one is silent because of being afraid of judgement, shame, ridicule, dismissal, confrontation, disbelief, or patronization, it may hinder our ability to reach you. Many times, it is through others who are more receptive (naturally sensitive) or who in are the right place and the right time for connection that we can deliver a message to them for you. The more other folks that know that we up in heaven and that we have indeed survived death, the more ways, and opportunities to connect through your network of family, friends, grief support companions, even co-workers and strangers.
9. Transparency, be honest, be transparent; feel what you feel, when you are transparent it is a two-way glass, it lets light it and allows light out. It is that seam which is the synergistic portal where we connect.  Be honest. Be open. Be aware. Be confident and give thanks in advance. Being thankful in advance brings in the helper bees. On earth you would call then nymphs, sprites, fairies or elfin that in a few rare instances have been spotted on earth. But know that they exist…they are prayer in action made physical and are always looking for work.
10. The most important thing is simply be open to the possibility, actively look, listen, feel and petition: identify what our signature is and look for it. When you recognize it, we will acknowledge it; it becomes our handle for the rest of your life.   

Sorry I went off on a tangent (angel ADD remember) I believe we were in the kitchen of my dad’s old house growing up. At any rate my dad’s family as in the mass exodus depicted in the book The Grapes of Wrath the family piled everything they owned in the back of a borrowed horse trailer complete with compost for their new garden at no charge. They were off to Grey Cloud Island like the Beverly Hillbillies but no oil money to purchase a mansion. They attained a 30 year mortgage on a 3-bedroom rambler with a detached one stall garage, a small barn, large garden situated on the banks of the Mississippi backwaters on 5 semi-wooded acres. My dad was in heaven, funny how everyone says that on earth, if you only knew, but then of course you would be dead.

Grey Cloud Island was an open playground for my dad, the only boy in the family and on his street, he spent most of his day on the banks of the river, climbing cliffs, swimming, exploring the woods, fishing and canoeing down the quiet backwaters by himself.  This was a paradise for an introverted, skinny little geek who preferred the company of polliwogs to people.

Then a crushing blow; his father dies in ICU following a failed triple bypass in 1969. His dad was only 49 years old. My dad was 15 at the time; everything changed in his life, Grey Cloud Island was no longer heaven on earth.

My mother around the same timeframe had been bullied severely by some public-school kids repeatedly, calling her many derogatory terms and making fun of her uniforms.  She told her parents she would not wear the awful plaid skirts, white blouses, bobby socks and Penney loafers ever again. She refused to go to school. Pampered to the extreme by her parents she got her way and she finished out the year at Our Lady of Perpetual Grace for the last time. Next year she would go to public school at Park Hi. The puzzle pieces were already coming together for my life’s task, but they were clueless.

My dad could now finally ride the bus to school. He left the security of his countryside junior high to attend Park with kids from all the surrounding suburbs. Most country kids attended an exceedingly small elementary school, my dad’s school on the island was the original one-room schoolhouse used for over a hundred years. The outhouse although boarded up was still in the back. The local kids all walked to school. They attended until 6^th grade, then graduated to attend one of the two Middle School/Junior Highs according to district geographic boundaries. Graduates from both schools combined with refugees from parochial school now merged to form Park Hi.  Like a microcosm of the melting pot of our country a diverse combination of elements created the alchemy that provided the foundational corner piece for my puzzle.

My mom noticed something special in my dad, he intrigued her. He was vastly different from the other boys, odd in fact but in a good way. He did not care what people thought, was kind of loner he was not part of any clicks, gangs, or academic groups, but did not hug the walls either. He seemed to appear proud that he was a geek and that he really liked school. My mom liked that part of him, and he was cute to boot. She started a background check and enlisted girlfriends that I knew to plant seeds on her behalf et al “you should ask him to the dance “.  They gave good counsel; Mitch and Barb met at the drinking fountain in 1969. If all went well, I would see 1979 with the eyes of a brand-new baby. The summer of love was already in progress from 1967 and was flourishing, that should not be a problem.

The rest as they say is history. They dated throughout high school, then both went to different colleges together 😊, got married, got pregnant, gave birth to me, and 3 years later my sister Meagan was born. Then at 7 years old I got sick, extremely sick. Shortly after my 9^th birthday I died of a brain tumor. This is when my true destiny/task began and why you are reading these words at this very moment.

 I knew I was dying; mom and dad knew I was dying, everyone whispered that I was dying, but no one talked to me about it. I was dying to talk about it !!!!😊.  My body ached, my head pounded continually, every step I took was an upward loud thud to my already throbbing brain, I could not even complain because it hurt to talk; I was just too damn tired to even try. The body shutting down really sucks, I thank God my Mom thought to run me hot baths all the time, that was all that seemed to stem the excruciating pain that was taking over my every waking moment.  Morphine suppositories are a joke and are literally a pain in the ass; a warm bath and my mom’s caressing hands was the best pain relief in your physical world.

Now on with the story. Did I pick my parents for this journey called life?  Damn straight I did, as you will eventually find out as your read this incredible tale of destiny and grace.  Life is a truly a waking dream for which we are active participants, dream big; there is a bigger picture. Let me attempt to elucidate you and expand the limits of what you believe to be true and to validate what you know to be true from a perspective only gained through my death.

I don’t know what you have been told, what you imagine, speculate or know to be true about life after death, but if I am communicating this to you the reader, it must be obvious that our personality, who we are does indeed survive death.  I am not providing this narrative to prove that fact or try to convince anyone of the notion that there is indeed life after death, it’s a story, my story.  

It’s so odd to think we that we can dream in heaven, but we do; we dream of earth. I have often dreamed of places I wanted to go visit and have often been with people that I seemed to recognize but not sure how or where I knew them from, just a “feeling “I would get.  Those feelings lingered in my soul as if though the dreams were real, the places were real, the people were real, the emotions I felt were real and I longed to go to earth more and more each time.

I started to wonder if these were scenes from a past life on earth where I longed to return to or to a new life on earth where I was being prepared to accept. Is funny that most people think that when once one gets to the other side you are in a glowing paradise sitting on a cloud with a bottomless cup of lemonade or playing a harp in the angel choir. Sorry to burst your bubble folks, it is not much different from earth in that respect, it’s a lot of work and a lot of patience. 

The difference is there is no hell up here, that is reserved for you earth dwellers. Heaven is a divine realization that cannot be denied, hell is denying it, hell is living in a vulnerable body, hell is feeling pain, hell is separation from the cosmic grid of perpetual grace. If there is a hell, Hell on earth is the most logical assumption. Purgatory is plain ignorance.  Heaven is cool, I like it here, but I also know I must travel to earth, like a moth to a flame, drawn to a light that it finds impossible to resist.

My Earth dreams were becoming stronger and more enduring, I could remember smells, remember names and places. I knew my time was coming soon, I was going to Earth!!!!   I had a dream of young couple who met for the first time at the drinking fountain just prior to Christmas of 1970.  It was my mom and dad of course. He took a sip from the fountain and water was dribbling down his chin, my mom without thinking flipped the droplets from his chin very seductively but yet quite innocent and said “are you going to the Christmas dance on Friday at the Country Club?  My dad, quite the geek that he was, replied to her:  No, I am going to a Friday bible study.

I said to myself: are you kidding me?  A beautiful girl walks up to you, makes physical contact that sets fire to your burgeoning hormones, then she asks you out for a date and you reply I am going to a flipping bible study?  That did it, this ain’t going to happen unless I intervene. I had to go in and make my first human contact at this stage of my development. Geronimo!!!! I jumped into my future dads head without any reticence and made him say…” wait a minute I think I will go to the dance, I will meet you there at 6:30. With that he blushed deeply and quickly ran down the hall to his next class.   My mom pulled the invisible air horn as she rounded the corner down the other hall to her class and said “yes”.   Close call. Dad is kind of naïve that way.  Mom makes shit happen.

My dad arrived late, which made my mom a little nervous that he had gotten cold feet and she thought he had decided to warm them up with a good fire & brimstone bible study for a few hours. LOL.  His bible study teacher Mr. Morrie was legit, a great guy, very humble and a good honest servant and I approve but I needed to be born. My dad’s feet were not cold they were floating on air, his buddies were late picking him up.

He arrived late with a consort of his buddies dressed in almost matching dirty blue jean jackets with long hair to their shoulders to match. My mom was escorted there by her older sister Jackie. Jackie recently has come to stay up here in heaven and OMG she was soooo glad to see me again!!! But off topic…at the dance she clutched my mom tightly and said “he is not one of them, is he?  They look like hoods “. My mom responded to her, just his ride sis, he is a sweetheart.

A far cry from a hood he was a although a thief. He stole her heart. He also stole a blue Christmas bulb off the clubhouse tree in the foyer, one of those very thin fragile glass ones, ice blue as her Nordic eyes.  He presented it to her as if it were the gift of the Magi outside in the cold Minnesota night in the snow-covered parking lot of the country club. Light newborn snowflakes glittered momentary in the warm glow of the sodium lights and melted softly on their upturned faces.  Her face glowing, she accepted the gift and thanked him with their first kiss.

 I was in like Flint.  I was so grateful and ecstatic they were perfect for me; they would create a perfect vehicle for my task and a chance to shed my wings for good.  It was either that or I start looking for a new car, and God forbid I get a used one again, my karma ran over my dharma last time; this is my last trip to Earth and all goes well I will get to be a full-time guardian angel and graduate to Angel 2^nd class.

I know that the boychild that they will create for my vehicle will be a short lived one, as I will die incredibly young, but I also know it is my choice. This will cause them much pain, horror and duress but is also part of the task they themselves chose for their soul’s own participation in the master plan for which I was/am a part of.  We are all puzzle pieces in some beautiful mosaic that has already been created at the dawn of time and that we slowly become aware of …sooner…or later and we put the puzzle pieces together in this life or the next.

This life that I am being born into, granted is a short arduous, unpleasant one, but one that needs being done and completed by design. I will be like Johnny Appleseed planting seeds in the landscape of the moment, and like Johnny when you run out of seeds, your task is done, you give thanks of gratitude for the journey that it took you on and have faith the seeds will sprout, and they will.

The human body is amazing but limited in a very oppressive world, all things living are subject to dying.  Our earth task is “our time in the body”. Our genes, our environment, our body, mind, and soul choices and that of others can cut short or extend the years the body survives on the planet.

I accepted this task in spirit, knowing what was in store, I have no regrets, it is impossible to have regret, remorse, guilt or sorrow in heaven.   There is however regret et al with choices that we make on earth. Free will is a blessing and a curse. Faith is knowing we will make the right choice. Wisdom is knowing when we have not. Serenity is when we recognize the fruition, the completion of the puzzle set before us.

For the most part it seems many pieces of the puzzle are missing in our lives, when in reality the timing of their placement is just not right. I remember trying to force a puzzle piece in; on earth we tend to do that.  You want to make it fit, not wait for it to fit. Your biggest problem on earth is not allowing the wheel to turn, even some so ignorant to think they can stop its course. Like trying to stop a hot lava flow, you cannot; you get out of the way. Sometimes on earth we need to get out of our own way.

The cogs of eternity shall continue to turn regardless, resistance is an illusion, but you can grease the cogs with intention to promulgate non-resistance. Time will still move forward, but without  perceived resistance the apparent flow of time is indiscernible; it just is; like the pause on a remote that seems to view a static picture when in reality the story has been already been told.  Things appear to be paused when in the ultimate reality -we are paused.  We are at the center of the wheel with many spokes that lead outward to our story. As the wheels on the bus go around, and round… so does our story. We cannot escape the wheel; we are the wheel. Be your story.

Going back is impossible. Time exists because it is a product of our creation, a creation that continually recreates itself moving forward as does the expansion of the universe, as seen in the centrifugal images of the nebulas of our galaxy; like our own DNA a helix, chain, a flattened torus of perpetual reinvestment. Now is all that we have, time does not forget, it does not foresee, it only is… so we be the best we can be at the current moment.

Einstein nailed it with his theory of relativity, Ram Dass said “be here now”. Jesus said I am the way and the light, follow me.  The past, the future, the present all on the same wheel. On earth you tend to concentrate on what you think is your individual spoke of the wheel from a place of ego and not a place of connection.

 You are much more than a single spoke (spokesperson 😊) but have not evolved enough to feel the wheel.   As Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars might have stated differently… “Luke…feel the wheel”.   From the circling electrons in an atom of your big toenail to the to the spinning and ever-expanding matter in the galaxy of Andromeda, the wheels on the bus go around and round into infinity. Nothing ever dies, energy is not consumed, it is transformed.

It is fair to say I was not consumed when I died. My body was being consumed by cancer when I was alive, but it could not touch my soul. My body without spiritual support merely transforms back into its carbon and hydrogen-based constituents that it shares with all matter and reconstitutes itself.  The soul gets back on the bus and the wheels go around and round.  When I took my last breath, I found myself back on the wheel and like a contestant on The Price is Right some angel like Drew Carey barked at me:” Kelly James Carmody come on down”.  

I remember his voice from when I died the first time but that time it was Jesus who spoke to me, but it was same gentle voice with the same reassuring and soothing timber that “I felt” as much as I heard. This felt the same.  When I died the first time my body was being operated on to remove a brain tumor that was wrapped around the medulla oblongata of my brain stem.  The diagnosis was terminal, but surgery would give me more time. Without surgery I would have died within weeks in horrible pain. My parents had no choice.

This all began when I was playing with some buddies in the playground at Bayport Elementary school, just a few short blocks from my house. I was hanging on the monkey bars when I heard a loud buzzing in my brain, like a loud freight train coursing through the echoes of a long tunnel and everything got blurry; I let go of the monkey bar falling to the sand below in a full blow grand mall seizure.

It scared the living shit of my teacher, and all the kids were crying.  That was the first time I left my body remembering only the acrid iron taste of blood in my mouth as my teeth clamped down like an alligator on my tongue and I shit my pants.  I could see my body cashewed into itself and was violently shaking on the ground in repetitive convulsions; pink foam bubbled from my tightly clenched lips that were now turning the color of a long-faded tattoo. I felt a warm light breeze carry me away from my body,  I felt like a baby again wrapped in the arms of my mother and she was singing softly in my ear the iconic Bob Marley song “Don’t worry about a thing; every little thing is going to be alright” and I fell into a deep, deep slumber and all went dark.

The next thing I remember was waking up in a hospital bed, my head shaved with a breathing vent tube be stuck in my throat. I could not talk, and I wanted to scream about what happened to me in the operating room, I remembered it all. I had left my body and I was holding hands with Jesus; I shit you not! it was him freel. Somethings you just know, he did not introduce himself, but he just smiled and said, “My Son you will be well”. He smiled like he had some great wonderful secret and I reached out to hug him but then everything faded and was wide awake in the hospital bed unable to talk. 

I had just met JC, the man, the savior, Lamb of God, Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, many names, same powerful entity. I know we had met before, but things get cloudy coming and going. I guess in old books they called it the veil of forgetfulness, like when you hurt yourself really bad, or someone causes you great pain we tend to forget shit associated around heavy-duty trauma; birthing and dying ain’t no picnic so it’s a good thing. But you do not forget meeting Jesus.

I could not wait to tell my Dad, he would think that was cool, as he believed in all that weird boogie woogie spirit stuff, Ouija Boards, Tarot Cards and crap, but he also had a very good relationship with Jesus, albeit a very casual one 😊 he had a deep faith.

Would someone please take this God damn tube out of my throat, so I can tell him! I screamed with my eyes.  I felt fully awake but could not seem to make my body work, and my head hurt like crazy, like the time I fell on ice when I was about 5 years old on the skating rink next to St. Charles church. I blacked out and had a concussion. It felt like that again waking up and not knowing where I was. My head hurt the same but this this time a could not move my body except for my eyes. I was scared but JC just told me I would be well, so I had faith I would be able to speak again.

A nurse came in with a look of alarm on her face. When her eyes finally connected with mine and we had eye contact, she saw I was awake; my eyes now pleading for recognition. I could feel most everything, but I could not move, and my whole right side felt extremely hot as well as did my head and the back of my neck. My head hurt everywhere, but the constant thudding headache was gone! I could not move or talk but I could feel the cooling pool of tears puddling up on the pillow behind my neck that had been streaming down my face since my eyes opened. The nurse quickly adjusted something on the IV and I drifted out of consciousness and felt myself zooming back home again (heaven).

When I arrived in Heaven, I found myself smack dab in the middle of lucid dream back on earth again. I was on another freaking game show, only this time it was Monty Hall on the stage of the Let’s Make a Deal, and he said Kelly come up on stage. Once on stage there was a hula girl from Hawaii that I knew (that is another story) who was the Vana White kind of lady that was introducing me to each door with almost a comical Hula move that made me laugh.  As she pointed to each door one at a time, Monty Hall with the same gentle voice I had heard before said: Kelly Carmody, this is your life, it is time for you to pick a door number.

I had to choose what was behind door number 1, 2, or 3.  Behind one door was the scenario that I would return to earth and live a full child’s life, grow up to be an adult, marry have my own family with three boys, a job as a computer analyst and my wife an author of children’s books. Behind another door was the scenario that I die of an undiscernible brain hemorrhage and wake up from this dream back in heaven, dead on earth.  Behind the third door I would go into a coma for a short while then have 18 months to get better, stronger and make some very necessary appointments before I die. Appointments that would fulfill and set up scenarios for other future synchronistic puzzle pieces to come together that have wonderful ramifications for the world. We all have our task to make that happen. It is our soul DNA helixing through eternity, reinventing itself for survival of our collective soul.

I had no idea which door held what fate, but I instantly felt the urge to choose door number 3 and shazam!! I immediately woke up back in my body in Peds ICU and I could move!!!  I am back; let the games begin.

 I awoke to see my mom and dad both holding my hand, as I reached for their hand they were struggling to speak, tears were pouring from their tired ashen faces; they were smiling and gasping for air at the same time; they thought I was a goner, but I picked the right door, not the worst, not the best one, but the right one. I had them for 18 more months, I had work to do to make those months count for my task and for theirs.

They alerted the nurses right away and as quickly as they could they removed the tracheotomy vent from my throat. I was obviously agitated, thrashing about and I was struggling to open and use my lips to speak.

Finally, the stupid tube was out but my throat and my tongue were so dry I barely croaked out “water” sounding very much like Patty Duke playing a young Helen Keller – it came out a very weak and raspy wa…wa but they got the message. I was given some water and started to rattle off the best I could what I had just experienced.

I was running at the mouth like crazy, but the looks on my parent’s faces looked perplexed and confused; they could not understand a word I was saying. The surgery had caused a small indiscernible bleed which would have killed me if I had chosen door number 2. Seeing as I chose door number 3 the bleed resected itself, but it had caused a stroke on the left side of my brain, the area that controls speech which also resulted in partial right sided paralysis. I could understand in my head everything I was saying, but all they heard was wa wa, dubba dubba wawa dubbadub wa etc.

WTF?  I want to go back to heaven, this really sucks, everything hurts, I cannot talk, I only have 18 months to live anyway. I just want to die, but I cannot as I already did. Boy howdy, was my brain in cognitive dissonance. I should have picked door number 1 or at least door number 2, but why this and for what?  So, I can hurt some more before I die again for the 2^nd time. Let’s make a deal, thanks Monty, fun game, and you too Drew Carey thanks a lot, the price is right my ass.  I hope to awaken from this nightmare on the game show You Bet your Life and the duck from the ceiling drops with the magic words “you are going home”!!!  

I was so agitated and obviously making no sense they increased my pain meds and things started to fade and I soon drifted off to sleep. This time I wake up and I am sitting on a park bench but it not in a park, but a bench oddly placed in the middle of nowhere on the crest of a hill overlooking a beautiful bucolic valley.  It had a shiny brass plaque attached proudly to the top rail of the back of the bench with the words “The 4 O’clock Bench” stenciled in italic relief. There were meadow larks singing loudly who were gracefully soaring above the blooming areas of clover that were bursting with hues of whites, pinks, and magentas. Honeybees joined the mix and the starlings were pecking away the drying cow pies scavenging for undigested grass seeds. A slice of Heaven. Or is it?  I am still trying to get my bearings and figure out what is real and what is a dream.

The meadow opened to smooth rolling hills manicured smooth like the green felt of poolhall billiard table from the hundreds of years of family owned land that supported large milk herds. I could see hundreds of ever-grazing black & white Holsteins peppering the verdant green landscape, not unlike a Grandma Moses painting come to life but in the right perspective 😊 and in HD. I never felt anything more peaceful in my life. In these relaxed soothing musings that I was having, I suddenly realized I was in no pain at all. I jumped up and off the bench screaming thank you God…and found myself soaring above the bench and above the serene landscape.

Not sure how to control this flight thing, was this heaven? was this an earth dream of heaven or a heaven dream of earth? or was I really flying? I was confused but delighted as I continued to soar above the countryside. It made me think of a movie my dad and I loved so much starring John Candy my favorite actor, who incidentally I got to meet up here!!!! He is a hoot; he is even funnier in spirit. In the movie, John Candy was riding shotgun in a dust cropping airplane and the pilot scared the hell out of him when suddenly, she shouted, “You ever buzz sheep Steve”?  The pilots face stamped with the look of someone about to scare the shit out of you and loving it, the pilot proceeded with a full downward plunge dive, with John Candy screaming the pilot pulled back on the throttle and just cresting closely above sheep, and they scattered madly in all directions. I remember when I was alive telling my Dad, I want to do that someday and it dawned on me that day was here.    

Like Casper the friendly ghost I flew down over the grazing milk cows and they scattered away scared as hell just like Steve’s sheep. Wow, what a feeling!!!! Then the epiphany struck me that they could see me, or at the least feel my presence. OMG I can still affect this world! I can communicate through the veil with my presence! This is huge. I can connect, I can engage with the planet in a very real way and I am confident it will work with humans as it does with cows; if they just learn to get out the way (the humans that is).

I started to think about the bench and there I was again just sitting on the bench in the warm summer sun listening to the meadowlarks sing and I drifted off into a deep slumber. When I awoke this time, I was back in the hospital bed again hooked up to monitors, the room was dark except for the faint glow of the monitor lights and the silent reflection of the nurse’s station lights dimmed for the evening. No sound on the floor except for the distant whirring of medical equipment, the steady woosh, pause, woosh, pause of someone’s life support and the occasional beeping monitor that stabbed the silence with an eerie calm. I was back, I was going to be okay.

 I believe that I am being groomed for “my task” but first my physical body needed to rest & digest, rebuild, and reclaim its potential. The cancer is still alive and well and the surgery had spread cancer cells in my body like a blowing seeds from a spent dandelion bloom.  Those seeds need to be beaten back if I am to make it 18 months, so they intend to pump me full of roundup and throw me in the microwave to slow it down. Then I will have daily physical therapy to rebuild control over the right side of my body as well as speech therapy to be able to speak intelligibly.  Isn’t this going to be fun?

Eventually I got the use of my speech back, but I had switch dominance of   hands and now was a born again left hander like my sister Meg. My recovery is another story in and of itself, a lot of hard work but not germane to this tale or my task at hand. If you are diagnosed with ADD on earth you will absolutely love it in heaven. When you find yourself in heaven, you will find we are big time multi taskers, especially early angels that are hungry for many simultaneous projects and tasks. Almost like bees collecting pollen in every direction with no sense of time, only of duty. They fulfill a plan (puzzle pieces) that they innately know what they need to do. Just as the geese know to fly North and the butterfly South it is in their nature.

This to so some extent is why so many people who want to hear from their loved ones get so mad/sad when their loved ones don’t seem to send them signs. We are busier than hell (pun intended) LOL up here, so much to do, get done, experience, discover, seek, prepare, influence, and intervene. Time does not exist in heaven so we may lose track of it, if that makes any sense. I know that processing the pain for the loss of loved one is time consuming. In grief you consume much time but without the awareness that it is happening.

The overwhelming grief for the loss of child can actually cut a piece out of the fabric of time; it changes the course of natural events, its bends light, it warps our constructs of time and parts of your reality are gone forever into a black hole of time and space. An “essential pause” takes place; not gone but embedded. Embedded in dark matter where light cannot reach, a missing puzzle piece waiting to be found. Read Einstein’s theory of relativity, he will validate what I mean.

I had referenced before in trying to stop time it is akin to pressing the pause on the remote. Grief gives us the illusion of a stoppage of time when time in your reality is only slowed down. Slowed down to growth of blade of grass, imperceptible but it happens. Nothing stops its forward movement.

Have you ever sat on a train in the trainyard and your train is sitting motionless, yet when the train on the next track moves the other direction you feel as if your train is moving forward in your train car? If you look out the other side of the train window and you now see a motionless train, your brain understands you are motionless too. Now if that train started to move you would again feel the same sense of your train moving when in reality it is not, but it is an illusion your brain believes.

What if the train on your right started to move one direction backward and the train on your left started to travel the same direction backward you would indeed experience the illusion that your train is moving forward when in fact you are static or paused while forward movement goes on regardless on either side. This is the illusion of time. It is our perspective that governs the speed at which we perceive its forward movement.   Driving home from a trip always seems faster does it not? Yet it is the same distance, same time covered. A good book, a good conversation accelerates our perception of time; pain slows it down; grief brings it to a halt. It takes forever for the toasting bread to pop up from the toaster when you are hungry and late for work; payday arrives way to slow when your broke. Backassward is it not?

In grief we are paused; time moves on regardless; we lose track of time in grief because our soul is on pause. In heaven we lose track of time because there is no point of reference to provide the illusion of its existence. For a point of relatable reference, one minute in heaven is roughly equal to one year on Earth.  I died 31 years ago in human understanding; at this writing in Heaven time I have only been here for a half an hour or so.  Crazy stuff huh?

With that being said, we can easily lose track of your time, which makes a big difference to you on earth and yet only a few milliseconds to us. Sometimes when our deaths are very violent, traumatic, sudden, or self-inflicted our souls rest in what some earth religions might call a kind of limbo. It is basically an ICU for the soul, a trauma reentry room of sorts that up here we call the cradle. Those souls who die in trauma need a very delicate reentry. Conditions of horror as in the holocaust or as in your society today with the many school shooting and terrorist attacks, so many souls leaving the earth unexpectedly and violently were totally spiritually unprepared.

Take 911 for example thousands of souls without presage ascended to heaven in an instant. All immediately went directly to the cradle. It is comparable to putting your earth body into an induced coma for long rest. Souls of evil intent and malice of heart who died that day also went to the cradle for rest (mostly containment) and eventually are reprocessed in completely differently area of the trauma reentry room that deals with dark energy (more on that later).

We are all composed of the same Star Stuff as your Carl Sagan coined on earth in the last century. He was pretty darn right on. We are star stuff. We are matter, our bodies are matter just as is the stars. Our souls our different although. They are made of anti-matter, alike in every which way but with a negative charge, whereas the body has a positive charge.  Just like a battery can only send energy to a bulb to produce light with a negative and a positive flow of energy. As is above is below. Its Yin Yang man. Basic shit.

Conception happens in humans and matter is created, a body grows in the womb from a mixture of DNA, and like the blue creatures in the movie Avatar await the arrival of soul. Soul can only enter the developing body when there is a working bipolar current which begins in the heart. Our consciousness, our spirit of life, our signature, the footprint of our soul and who we are -begins at that first heartbeat only 18 days from conception. Heart cells are specialized electrical cells, the heart itself is only a blood pump with no on/off switch. Its cells beat in syncopation with each other at a cellular level. The heart provided with oxygen in saline solution will continue to beat outside the human body indefinitely and why it transplants to other humans works so well.

When those first few heart beats begin, spirit, the life force, the light from the big bang invites in soul to animate this growing human child and a life begins. That is where we as potential earth dwellers get our call to “Geronimo in” and our task begins at that first heartbeat.

The flow of souls to and from earth is complicated to explain but I will try to simplify.  Currently on earth the retired baby boomer generation is dying to get here 😊 we get over 100,000 beleaguered souls a day.  The birth/death rate algorithm by design is 2 to 1. Twice as many souls heading to earth as those leaving or currently about 200,000 births a day worldwide.  Sadly, enough about 10% of those births are returned because of genetic flaws, a non-viable environment, disease, accident, abortion, or murder. Those returning so quickly are often sent back immediately if there is an opportunity that aligns with their task.

When death happens for any reason at age, it is when our heart stops. We are off the grid of grace, we lose power, our body goes dark, our soul separates from the physical like smoke from a lazy campfire. 

When death occurs matter and anti-matter separate. We are not the star stuff you see glowing in the night sky, we are formed from the collision of matter and anti-matter that creates pure energy, the quintessential form of synergy where the sum is greater than the means. When that happens, a life is created, and we get back on the wheel.

Dark matter is another thing, much is unknown on earth about it, but it nevertheless exists.  Dark matter is the space between matter and antimatter, like the space between the nucleus of an atom and its electron or the space between the nebulas in Andromeda or between the rings on Saturn. It is the plasma of the universe that holds all things together.  It does not interact with light, its dark and invisible yet has mass and exists in quantities 6 times that of matter and antimatter.  It coexists and has purpose.

People on earth are often quick to claim they have the answers before they even know the question. Scientists, spiritual leaders, and politicians alike have their own versions of the truth.  No one really knows on earth, so they speculate, harangue, and proselytize their version of the truth. Humans are merely arrogant hairless apes with an attitude of superiority that they think that they oversee the planet and the heavens. They are not in charge.

There is only light when matter and anti-matter collide and produce it.  Light is God; the inceptual algorithm from the big bang sending light forever outward in the universe for eternity. Darkness is merely absence of light, the dark matter between the stars. This is what you earth dwellers call hell.

Many religions say hell is the fires of eternity, a lake of fire within the bowels of the earth to burn and torture the malevolent souls for eternity. Many people claim hell is on earth with so much pain, murder, and mayhem besetting people every day. Many claim that Hell is a fictional place invented to keep the masses in line and that it simply does not exist.

To put it succinctly hell is separation from God. We are matter, our soul’s antimatter, in-between we have dark matter that will not hold or react with light. Dark matter has the capacity up to 6 times that of matter. The malevolent souls who separate from the God given light that they are born with, will most likely bypass the trauma re-entry room upon their physical death. They spend a short period in the cradle for a chance for remorse/reconciliation. If it is determined that they can be exonerated, they will return, or they will spend eternity in the dark matter and slowly be absorbed back into the sun to nourish the planet. Kind of a cosmic compost, a process that turns shitheads into photons.  Like the phoenix rising from the from the flames of the sun. Light waves return to earth.

Heaven is not so much a place… but a place of being; intense light and divine matter. Earth gives us the opportunity for expression of that being.  Almost unilaterally across the globe most religions state that God is up. That heaven is in the sky and most beings when they die are said to ascend.

As in most beliefs system it stems from a kernel of truth, which is then telephone gamed into somethings else entirely, but this is fact. Heaven is up and it has a name. Scientists have referred it to as the Van Allan Belt. They are not referring to it as Valhalla or a heavenly paradise but to the radiation belts that surround our planet.

Around our planet is two doughnut shaped belts of intense radiation that circulate in Taurus fashion from the Earth’s Negatively charge pole to its southern Positive charged pole.  They are to thought buffer and protect the planet from dangerous solar flares but are a dangerous radiation concern for Astronauts. When passing through it, they do so quickly at the thinnest part.  For souls coming and going from the planet, The Van Alan belt is Grand Central Station for all travel. The inner belt for all intents and purposes is our trauma reentry area and where souls are cradled and bathed in the positrons of goodness and light.   

The inner Taurus is where all the newborn souls “Geronimo” in from to their intended bodies when its designated heart cells start to beat.  Quick returns who only stay briefly, stay, rest and are returned from this the area of heaven very quickly. In the last few years, your scientists have discovered an overwhelming presence of anti-matter in the inner belt, never known to exist.  As I told you before our souls are anti-matter. The mirror image of each other but with reversed polarity.  Our bodies matter (pun intended) our souls are anti-matter. Therefore, when people see a vision or visitation of their deceased love one and it looks like them because it is them. Only difference is they are anti-matter, pure light not physical mass, but a mirror image of the matter you knew. Like the reflection in a mirror does not have mass but still exists, we see it.

The inner belt is closest to the earth at both poles where it is the thinnest and where astronauts travel through back and forth from space. This is also where souls pass back and forth. The outer belt is composed mostly of electrons, but it is where brand new souls and recycled dark souls coming in as photons (loose particles from the sun) who gather to form a human soul. With the store of excess electrons in the Van Alan belt God creates a new ethereal body of anti-matter that can take on physical form. When that is accomplished, they travel to the inner belt where they are assigned or reassigned their task; they wait patiently for their avatar’s heart to start beating.

This lower Torus (Grand Central Station) of heaven is only 360 miles above the Earth. We are much close than you think. Souls leaving earth enter the magnetic field of the first Torus, rest and wait instructions as do souls entering from the upper Torus going earthbound.  Antimatter in the lower Torus is for the most part recent souls from earth awaiting task assignment. Cradle time is almost instantaneous for those needing it.  Those waiting, orbit the planet by its gravitational pull until it’s their Geronimo time and  two become as one, God manifested in Matter and the heart begins to beat. That is what is so unique about our planet and why it sustains life, we are girdled by heaven created by father God and sustained by Mother Earth. One inseparable ecosystem of the divinity that runs by laws of physics not the laws of man.

This lower Torus is where the trauma reentry room is located as I mentioned before its where souls travel too upon their physical death. You may remember the scene from the movie the Wizard of Oz where they brought this unlikely band of travelers to special room upon their initial entry into Oz. They re-stuffed the Scare-a-crow, oiled, and buffed the Tin Man, gave a spa treatment and pedicure to the Cowardly Lion.  That is kind of what happens up here, it’s our port of entry where all souls who cross over are cleaned up, deprogrammed from earth logic and prepared for re-entry to heaven (task completed), a return to earth, spend some needed cradle time or are jettisoned into the dark matter and recycled.

The more traumatic cases go to areas of deep sleep, akin to a coma in heaven the rest in cocoons of ancient light emanating from the beginning of time; they rest for as long as needed. In earth time that can be many, many years. Not only are they processing this as part of their task, but they are processing it as part of yours. Your loved ones, your friends, the strangers you encounter, are all puzzle pieces. Puzzle placers or puzzle dodgers are placed in your life as part at their task and yours. There are things left undone, unfinished business, seeds sprouted and yet unattended, holes that we leave on earth left unfilled.

If grievers on earth harbor any anger, resentment, guilt and unforgiveness toward their loved one or in constant petition to have them back in their life it only holds us back and we may slumber through a griever’s earth lifetime.  Just a heads up to earth dwellers, you can help us or hinder our journey and how you choose to live your journey. Please try to remember that we are in this together, always have been, always will. It is a part of every task we accept; we are spokes on the same wheel.

It is also important for earth dwellers to remember to pray for the wee ones that cross over too soon whether they die in the womb, at birth or soon thereafter.  They only rest for a short time in the cradle if at all, and its back in the saddle again.  Wee ones have not created a signature for the world to recognize and it is challenging at best to communicate back.  Mothers who carried their child and or a gestational twin that shared the womb have a physical conduit of connection that others do not and may be predisposed to receive signs easier.  

The wee ones who return so quickly are heaven’s cherubs. You must realize the birthing is an extremely arduous task not only for the mother but for us.  We have the freedom of no restrictions in heaven whatsoever and we can convey our thoughts at a whim; we don’t use our lips in heaven; its heart to heart which need for translation.  We can move about easily without hinderance of physical form and we feel no physical sensations.

When we take on body, we are comfortable, cozy, well fed listening to the comforting metronome of our mother’s heart. When someone lets the water of the bathtub, we know it’s time to get out; shortly thereafter cold and shivering we are pulled into the very small drain of the birth canal and literally get the shit squeezed out of us.  I did not need someone to slap me on the ass to get me to cry, I was screaming with a voice I never heard in a scary place I have never seen. So why did I want to come here?

To piggyback on that, when there is fatality at or near birth with a baby, after a brief rest (in heaven time) their soul returns from cradle as a cherub and they flit around happy as can be, ready for the next task, or making mischief on earth to get a new vehicle ready. See where the Cupid story comes from, it has a basis in fact. But in many cases, they return right back in the same birth mother or a member of the extended family very quickly to resume their task where earth conditions, timing, people, geography were all still favorable for the task at hand.

The onus to the grieving earth dweller it to learn how to communicate heart to heart. Look with your love and believe with your soul that it ain’t over when it is over.  Expect miracles, but you must look for them. You do not find a 4-leaf clover if you do not look for one. You do not get directions if you do not ask. You do not win the Lottery if you do not by a ticket.

We are not in control of our actions when in rest, but after an undetermined rest in limbo the souls are released. On earth we would call it PTSD, in heaven its PTDS, Post Traumatic Death Syndrome 😊. In horrific death situations as mentioned before, energies must be balanced and insights into transitioning restored slowly and delicately which takes (from your perspective) much time. It may be years before they fly, dream visit, send a sign or communicate or prepare again for their task. They cannot venture out while resting, but they can and will when ready. Incidentally, prayer is a very real energy flow and helps us heal in the cradle faster, as well as in healing from any of your earthbound challenges.

Now on with the story when I made my dad “go condo”. This was last click in the stargate between our worlds that opened the portal allowing placement of the last piece of the puzzle into place for my task. That is where my Dad is now. My task is our task; we did it. 

To be continued.   Chapter 1: Going home, the day that I died.

Mitch Carmody

August 2020

http://www.heartlightstudios.com