Just Once

A testament to the extravagant love of parents

They said it would be a bright light—­­a bright light at the end of a hopelessly dark and narrow tunnel. I expected something tangible in front of me that would force me to squint and cover my eyes as I neared it.

It wasn’t like that at all.

It wasn’t simply a perception before me, behind me, or even all around me. It filled me completely. And though I’d found myself in an unfamiliar place with no anchor to reality, the (not quite) light washed me with peace and calmness unlike anything I’d ever known.

In the distance, stood a collection of vague structures like a city blanketed by fog on cold mornings. Maybe there lay the magical Pearly Gates and Streets of Gold, or maybe that myth was as wrong as the bright light at the end of a tunnel.

A crowd began to slowly materialize from the brilliant background. I recognized the faces of hundreds of people, those I’d treasured most in all the world. Their smiles were dazzling, and I studied each one with my own countenance brightening. I realized after a moment of scanning the welcoming committee that I wasn’t just looking at those who greeted me. I was looking for someone.

One little boy.

And he wasn’t there.

The peaceful feeling ran from me, was chased away by confusion and fear.

It was at that exact moment, when panic set in, that I heard a voice say my name just once. A voice with the strength of a thousand waters, powerful yet gentle. When I turned to see the speaker, I whimpered and fell to my knees. Tears spilled from my eyes, and my throat choked on the words I couldn’t form, words of awe and adoration.

He smiled, pulled me from the ground and into his arms. I felt the weight of all creation wrapped around me without being crushed by it. He brushed the tears from my cheeks with his calloused thumb, and his smile broadened.

“Hey,” I said, managing an awkward chuckle. Then my brow wrinkled. I stepped back and watched his face transform from unimaginable joy to overwhelming sadness.

“You weren’t looking for me,” he said.

“No.”

He nodded. The sadness in his expression lingered. The crowd did not. Not that I saw them leave, just that suddenly we found ourselves alone.

He sat down, ankles crossed like a child, and gestured for me to join him. He looked around the emptiness and said, “This is a place between worlds.”

When I didn’t respond, he continued.

“You’ve been here before. You don’t recognize it.”

Not a question, but I shook my head to confirm. How could I have been there without remembering it?

“I love so much the things I create—the trees, the ocean, the birds, but most of all the people. I can’t bear to lose any of them, so I created a failsafe. When one dies before discovering their true selves, they are reborn. They don’t remember former lives clearly, but it’s hidden beneath your new perception of reality. You use those old memories to grow closer. The process is repeated until you realize who you really are, and then you come home to me.”

“But this isn’t home,” I said.

He shook his head, slow and deliberate, as if trying to draw this conversation out as long as he could.

“I’m not usually part of the welcoming committee.”

I knew I was meant to ask why, to ask what was so different about my arrival, but I couldn’t. There was something else I needed to ask instead. Something burning inside that had to come out before I could bare another moment of this beautiful no-place, this in-between worlds, this saddened creator.

“Where is he?”

He lowered his head and nodded again, plucking blades of freshly sprouted grass and rubbing them between his fingers.

“And this is as far as we get. Every time.” He shifted his eyes to meet mine, then studied my face, as if attempting to memorize every feature. I recognized the gesture, having done the exact same thing once long ago.

“Why isn’t he here?”

“He was a gift, you know? And he was given a gift.”

“If people either come here or try again, he has to be somewhere. Is he on earth now? Why couldn’t he come here? He didn’t understand anything!”

“You say that he didn’t understand anything. That’s true. His sickness didn’t allow cognitive awareness, not as uncommon a condition as you might think. How can one such as him try again? Another go around wouldn’t create understanding for him; he’d get caught in a hopeless cycle that produced nothing but pain and suffering. And I will not allow the creation I love to suffer needlessly.”

“Where is he?”

“He isn’t anywhere.”

A sensation of draining like a bathtub when the plug is pulled, and the water rushes out. It started at the top of my head and flooded through my feet, in an instant (less than an instant as if it had happened all at once like a finger-snap, but I know it didn’t; it traveled with such force that I wondered if it stopped at my feet or continued into the ground beneath me). It left a coldness on the surface of my skin and in every space within, from my cranial cavity to the intercellular tissue of my toes. Emptiness would have been preferred to the needle-like coldness. This was the true sense of descending into the furthest reaches of hell, where hope is smashed into a million pieces of dust like the fine white powder of ashes kept safely in an exquisite vase, golden and heavy—so very heavy. Fragments so tiny that one could easily blow them away and pretend they never existed.

I cried (big, ugly sobs) and collapsed to the ground.

He watched and let the violent emotion run its course. When I couldn’t possibly shed another tear, I sat up and asked the following question (a question that he had known all along I would ask because I had asked it countless times before): “Can I see him again?”

“You can.”

“Please… I have lived so long without him.”

The creator looked across what had become a field of grass, mostly wildflowers and weeds. It was lined closely by an expanse of trees swaying in the wind.

“Do you recognize this field?”

Without looking, I said, “It was my backyard when I was a child.”

“You and I spent a lot of time here together,” He paused and raised his eyebrows before adding, “this last time.”

“What about this place?” He asked.

The scenery changed from the field behind my childhood home to a raging river. We were in a boat that was docked to a steep bank with a sprawling city made of wood just beyond. I had to reach further back but found that yes, I remembered this place as well.

“And here?”

Sand replaced the solid ground and the raging river. A hot breeze blew through my hair. The scent was unmistakably of desert, which one can only understand after spending a lifetime in such a place. The wooden houses turned to tents and the city to a nomadic settlement.

“You’ve lived more lives than any other human being. You are the only one to come here and choose to go back. And you do choose to go back… every time.”

“It’s the only way I can be with him?”

He shook his head. “It’s the only way you will see him again, but I wouldn’t say be with him.”

“What do you mean?”

“You two are a rare combination.” He paused, and I felt again as if the pause was purposeful, intended to make this time be as full as it possibly could.

“You’re insanely curious. You know that? You always are in every life. You want to know everything about me, so you start exploring the things I created. Tell me because I know that you know: what are the basic building blocks I use when creating life?”

“Oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon. Lots of carbon.”

“Yes,” he mused. “The things you choose to call it humors me, and how it changes over time. Carbon.”

“I always said that one was your favorite. You used it everywhere.”

“I remember you once wrote, ‘Is God carbon?’ It made me laugh.”

“It’s amazing… remarkable, actually… how you create…”

“I’m glad to have impressed you,” he said, chuckling. I lost myself in that brief moment of laughter, his happiness making me forget my fears.

“Humans are created like everything else,” he continued, breaking my reverie. “Each time I make someone new, I use the same basic ingredients; I just arrange them differently. The end product is usually somewhat predictable with exceptions. I must admit something entirely new and surprising came about with the two of you.”

“What do you mean?”

“When did you first learn that he was sick?”

The abrupt switch in conversation startled me, and I found the answer escaping my lips before my mind could catch up. “He was nine-months old when I knew something wasn’t right. I didn’t get his diagnosis until he was closer to two years.”

“That’s when your conscious mind became aware of his sickness, but this is what I observed: your body knew he was sick the moment he was formed. Maybe not your body. Maybe you’d understand it better if I said your soul, though the difference between the two isn’t as pronounced as you think. You instinctively knew that he was sick and would die, and you would do anything to prevent that, so you attached your soul to his in a way that I’ve never seen.”

“Okay,” I nodded slowly. “So how do we get him here?”

“We don’t. He never comes here. But because your soul attached to his, every time that you return to earth, he will be momentarily reborn into existence.”

He watched as I mulled over his words, the great teacher waiting for his student to finally make the right decision. Though it didn’t feel like a decision at all, more like an action already determined for me, by me long before.

“You said that we go back and try again until we realize our true selves. I know my true self. I am his mother, and I can never be that here.”

“No, your true self is my daughter!” he yelled. A terrible anger clouded his expression, immediately replaced by surprise. He wasn’t known for uncontrolled outbursts. However, I’d also never considered him a broken-hearted father simply longing to be with his children.

“Of all the things I have created, I believe that parents are most like me.” He sighed and added his final plea, “Come home. You have been doing this for thousands of years, and I don’t know how much more your soul can take. You were made for perfect peace with me.”

“If I come with you to the next world, will I forget him?”

“How else could you be at peace?”

“I choose death over forgetting him.”

“I know. You always do.”

“And you won’t make me come with you? You’ll let me choose?”

“I always do.”

I felt an unbearable tiredness creep up without warning and push down on my shoulders. I wanted him to make me come home, to rest, because unless I was forced to, I would never choose it.

“This may be the last time we meet here,” the creator said gently.

I believed him.

“Can I ask you for a favor?”

“Yes.”

“This time before he dies, can he please say my name? Just once?”