What Dreams May Come...

I can see Robin Williams running with his dog through a field of flowers, I can see him sitting alone in a house creating a window by running his finger through paint as thick as frosting. He plays Chris, a man who will go to the depths of hell and risk losing his own soul to find his wife. This is a movie about heaven and love and what love can make happen. The art in this movie speaks to my creative self, the story to my spiritual self.

Over the last two years I have discovered that my brand of spirituality was not something that I alone conceived of. I was not the only one stirring this concoction. Little by little through reading, watching, and listening carefully I discovered a community of people who believe like me, who know a God that broke himself into billions of tiny pieces to see if they could all find their way back to each other; a game, and experiment.

These bits and pieces are the energy source that is life.

How the rest of it works I have no idea. I am not sure anyone knows for sure. Maybe God is just waiting to see how it all plays out. If God put a tiny bit of himself in you would you find a way to put him back together not knowing what you were really doing just being guided by the love inside you?

Remember the Iron Giant? Each time he is destroyed he finds a way to put himself back together again just to be destroyed out of fear one more time, he keeps trying. Is that what happened to Jesus? Did we find a way to put a big piece of God back together and we were just to afraid to look at what we belong to, so we took him apart? Will God just keep trying?

I digress...

I loved the movie and I always wanted to read the book. For a long time I didn't even know there was an actual book and not just a screenplay. For some reason I never found the book, it had to find me, and it did.

Three days ago I took Noah shopping. He needed pants and shoes, he keeps growing and growing. We passed by the Barnes and Nobles window on our way back to the parking lot and I peeked inside silently praying that I would see Stevie. She would be sitting in an overstuffed chair sipping a pumpkin latte, soy of course, and reading a big fat novel, her nerdy glasses with the black rectangle frames sitting on her tiny nose, auburn hair pulled back in a pony tail. She would be wearing her gold sweater, denim skirt, leggings and green chucks. There would be a stack of books next to her chair that she would bring home and read in the sun room.

I promised God I would just stand there at the window and watch her, I would just love her, I didn't have to touch her or talk to her, just know she was there.

The chair I had in mind was overflowing with a very large man reading a magazine. He had a scruffy beard and a belly that rested on his knees. I wondered where he found a shirt that buttoned around him so easily. He was not Stevie, he was kind enough and worthy of love but he was not who I was looking for.

I took a deep breath and planned to keep moving in the direction of my car until I felt a pull, it is the only way to describe it. I felt something pulling me in. I didn't want to go in. I didn't want to smell the books and the coffee, I didn't want to see the covers and know instantly which books she would have picked up. I didn't want remember waiting for her to find the book she wanted angry because she always took so long, touching books, walking slowly down isles, picking up three putting down two, putting down two picking up one. It was like the books fed and nurtured her, the words comforted her, the stories embraced her. I didn't want to remember.

I opened the door and went in. I don't know why. Tears started, the kind that just fill up your eyes and roll down your cheeks warm and heavy. Then I had a thought, "Find What Dreams May come" Don't ask me how I remembered the author I just moved forward pulled.. There was one copy left and I needed help finding it, the computer said it was on the shelf but it had been shelved incorrectly. I held it in my hands after the tiny lady in the green t-shirt located and I felt what Stevie must have felt when she found the perfect book, a vibration that was kind of a satellite signal that showed you the way home.

I cried all the way back quietly so Noah wouldn't know. It was dark and he was in the backseat absorbed in lacing up his new red chucks. He looks so much like Stevie. I sometimes want to pretend he is her but I know it would be wrong, he deserves to be his self and she deserves her own memory. He laced and laced I dripped and leaked, and soon we were home. He played with Dad I took my new book into a hot bath with me.

I read the first chapter and had to stop. My heart was pounding and tears came again. This time I turned the tap on for noise and sobbed. I was so sad and missing her so much. I had been asking and asking, praying and praying and here in my hands was a book that was telling me a story I already knew.

I wrote a story about after. It was about Stevie's journey to heaven. I wrote it because I wanted to believe it and writing it helped me find a place that was almost real. I wrote it all night. I read it when my mind overflows with all the saddest parts of her life. The story helps me concentrate on what could really be happening.

Richard Matheson had already written the story of after and of a love that is so strong that it could not be lost or stolen even by hell.

I read his book a couple pages at a time, I wanted it to last, to never end. I knew it would, I even knew how but I needed to read the words that created a picture that healed me. Richards book was written with the help of others who have written about these things, where those ideas came from is a mystery but while I was reading I felt a few pieces of God finding themselves and fitting together like perfect puzzle pieces.

I don't think Stevie lives in a house with paint as thick as frosting. Her walls are solid, her windows open to the shade of trees and the sounds of the ocean. I was always looking for a better a better house for us all to live and grow in, a house that fit us. I use to drag her around model homes, we would make plans, pick cities, make lists. I was always looking for the perfect place for her to wake up in. I guess this was the house she was suppose to live this part of her life in. I want to believe that she is now making the perfect place for me to come home to, she knows what to do, she has vision and she knows how to build something good and strong out of love.

I see her running through a field of yellow tulips, sitting under a giant redwood barefoot, reading and humming. She is OK, she is happy and her life is what ever she wants it to be, there is nothing to hold her back she is home.