At the Veil

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you don’t know how you got there? I don’t mean the kind of situation where you didn’t expect to be there, but how it happened is known to you. I mean when you suddenly find yourself in the middle of something and you literally have no idea how you got there, when you got there, or the context of what is happening at the immediate moment. Kind of like when a dream starts, and you have no idea what is going on or how you got where you’re at, but you just roll with it… that’s what I mean when I ask if you have ever found yourself in a situation where you don’t know how you got there.

You see, I don’t know how or when, but I suddenly found myself in a place and I had no idea how I got there. I had been at this place before, it was a street corner in the town I live in, but I didn’t know how I had gotten there that particular time.

I looked around for context, for anything, which would give me a clue as to what was going on. People hurried around, many in a panicked manner, I could hear sirens in the distance, and across the intersection there was a car that had jumped the curb and crashed into a traffic light pole. I reached for my phone to call 911 as a knee jerk reaction, but it wasn’t in my pocket where I expected it to be.

“Is anyone injured?” I yelled as I began to walk towards the accident. Nobody seemed to pay me any mind, and I began to make my way across the intersection. It was surprisingly difficult to make my way past the panicked folk and the stopped traffic, and before I made it halfway across the street I heard someone finally speak to me.

“You shouldn’t do that.”

The voice wasn’t terribly distinct, but it caught my attention. It sounded like a small child that was speaking directly to me. I turned around, looking for the child who spoke to me. I did not see anyone who the voice could belong to, so I continued to make my way back towards the accident.

“You won’t be able to help.”

I stopped again, and looked around for the source of that voice. “Does anyone else hear that voice?” I shouted, but nobody answered me.

“This isn’t what you think it is.” The voice came from a small child who was right next to me. I nearly jumped out of my skin, and I swear that child had not been there a moment before.

“Where are your parents?” I asked the child after composing myself.

The child stared at me for a moment with an intensity that I’d never known a child to possess. “They’re this way,” the child answered. It reached out its hand out towards me. “Can you help me find them?”

I paused for a moment, unsure of what to do. Get the child to its parents amidst this panicked rush, or head to the accident to make sure everyone was okay. “Can someone help this child find their family?” again, nobody responded. The child grabbed me by the hand and pulled me back the way I had come. “I’m sorry,” I reached out for someone who was rushing by, “but I need to see if I can help.”

“Stop!” the child screamed, but I wasn’t listening, and it was too late. My hand passed through the shoulder of the person as though it wasn’t even there.

“What the Hell?” I looked at the person who kept on going, completely unaware that I had tried to grab them. I then looked at the child who had been pulling me away from the accident and back towards the curb. “What the HELL?”

The child’s expression shifted into one of concern, then to one of pity. “I’m sorry mister, but you’ve been in a terrible accident and you need to come with me.”

I was so confused. I had been in a terrible accident; what terrible accident? Then a painful realization came to me. “No, stop!” the child shouted again as I turned and ran towards the wreck. I peered into the window, but I didn’t see myself, or anyone else for that matter. How was that possible? If I had been in this accident I should at least be in the car.

It took me a moment to notice that the driver’s side door was open. I looked down the sidewalk and there was a man, bruised and a little cut up, curled up in the fetal position and crying as people were checking to see if he was okay. I observed the man; he had obviously been the driver of the car. I realized I didn’t know who he was, and he certainly wasn’t me.

“You need to stop and follow me right now,” the child yelled at me. “If you don’t, then you’re only going to cause yourself problems that you can’t undo.”

This didn’t make any sense to me. I wasn’t in the car when it crashed into the traffic light pole, but I was the one who was dead. And then, coming from the driver curled up in his own guilt, came a horrible sound making horrible words. “I didn’t see them, I didn’t see them,” he sobbed, over and over again.

Them.

Not him. Not that guy. Them.

I looked back towards the point of impact where the car had run into the traffic light pole.

The child positioned itself between me and where my focus was. “Don’t do it mister. You’ll never be able to forgive yourself if you do.”

I pushed past the child with a fervor that I never knew I could possess, and as I approached the point of impact I noticed two people partially under the car. There was myself, my body bent in an unnatural pose as I tried to shield someone, and there was a little girl… my daughter.

Memories of the event came rushing back. My little Elisa was skipping on the sidewalk ahead of me. There was loud pop of a tire blowing out, a car swerved, and I scrambled to my child. Then… then nothing.

Then I was across the street wondering what was going on.

“I’m sorry mister,” the child’s voice was full of remorse. “I’m sorry this happened to you, I’m sorry you saw this, and I’m sorry I couldn’t stop you.”

“Stop me?” my voice was coated with fear and anger. “This is the last time I’ll see my Elisa,” I turned to the child, my volume rising as I spoke, “why would you try to stop me? What gave you the right to try to stop me?”

The child’s expression changed from that of pity to something far more morose. I looked back towards the body of my baby; the broken body of my baby. I turned to face the child, the one being who apparently could see me, but there was no child there anymore. A tall and imposing woman stood before me, an unimpressed and impatient look painted upon her face. I stared up at her in shock, without saying a word.

“What?” She looked down at me with annoyance and distain, her arms firmly crossed. “You were going to chide me about how it wasn’t my right to keep you from seeing your daughter one last time, right?” Not a single sound left my lips as I stared up at her in awe and fear. “Nothing else to say? Good, now it’s my turn.” She leaned forward as she admonished me in turn. “We wanted to get you in for processing as quickly as possible so that we could potentially save one of you,” she pointed at our bodies to drive the point home. “But now that window is closed. It is possible we would have been able to save one of you, and we would have been able to choose which one to save. Unfortunately you,” she poked me in the chest as she said this,” chose to stay behind, and now that choice out of our hands.”

“So…” I began to process what she was saying, “I get to choose if my daughter lives?”

She folded her arms again. “In a way… yes.”

“Then I choose her. Let her live.”

“That’s not how this works,” she leaned in close to me again as she spoke. “This isn’t something conscious that you simply choose to do. Since you are currently a soul devoid of life, you have to be completely willing to surrender living and pass on, or your child will not be able to rejoin the living world.”

“What… what does that mean?”

“It means you,” she reached out and poked me in the chest, “have to give up any desire for living. You,” she poked me again, “have to let go of being with your daughter. You,” another poke, “have to be okay knowing you’ll never see her grow up. Any feeling or desire that you,” another poke, “have will tether your spirit to the living world, and will prevent her from being able to do so.

I feel back as the realization of what that meant hit me. I curled up into a ball, similar to how the driver of the car was positioned. “That’s not possible,” I whispered. “That’s impossible to do. I can’t just never want to see my child again!” I looked up at the woman, tears streaming down my face, “How can I do it? Please, you have to tell me how.”

“I have no idea. It is something you have to figure out on your own. But given how close the sirens seem, you might have three or four minutes to figure it out.”

She turned and began to walk away. “You can’t leave me like this!” I screamed. “Please, you have to help me!”

She began to walk into the crowd of people; they were less panicked now, and were waiting for emergency services to show up. For a moment I lost sight of her as people shifted and moved, and when I caught sight of her she was the child again.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her face full of pity once more. “It’s too late.”

Without another word, she disappeared into the crowd.

I sat there, rocking back and forth, quietly sobbing. I sobbed when the ambulance showed up. I sobbed when they got out the defibrillators. I sobbed when they applied the paddles to my daughter and myself.

…And I sobbed when I woke up in a hospital bed.