Something was off. I could feel it in my bones. I didn’t know what it was. I started having a strange, almost out-of-body experience for a few days. I couldn’t put my finger on it and I still can’t exactly describe what it felt like. But something was definitely off and I didn’t know what it was.
All day Saturday, I didn’t feel like myself. It seemed like something subtle had been brewing just under the surface for a few days now that I had subconsciously perceived but ignored. After a few days passed like this, I woke up Saturday and it was amplified. I had the strangest feeling throughout my body like I’d never felt before. I couldn’t figure out if it was anxiety or some kind of physical condition or if it was the California summer heat affecting me with no A/C in the apartment. I hoped it would eventually subside and go away. But Sunday, it was even worse. I walked around in a dizzying haze of confusion all day that day, too.
I woke up Monday feeling the weight of the world on me. It was worse than the days before.
Now I was concerned. I still hadn’t told anyone because it was weird and I wasn’t sure anything was even happening. I was thinking of going to the hospital but I didn’t even know what was wrong or what to say. My whole body was tense and tingling, I felt like a nervous wreck. I was completely on edge for a reason I couldn’t explain. It was starting to scare me. What would I tell a doctor? How could they even help me with this? My anxiety usually manifests physically but this was unlike anything I’d ever felt before in my life. I tried calming techniques, practicing breathing, trying to reassure myself. As I was getting in bed that night, I decided I would see how tomorrow goes and then decide if this is something for which I should go to the hospital.
My sister messaged me around 11:30 that night and was excited about how work went and I told her how proud of her I was and we laughed at a TV clip and that was it. Midnight rolls around. I’m still scrolling on my phone. Anxious. One o’clock rolls around. Still scrolling, still anxious. Around 1:30am, past the end of my bed in the kitchen area of the apartment, I begin hearing strange sounds. It sounded like soft twinkling or crinkling maybe, I can’t describe it. I heard it but ignored it. But after a minute or so, it was growing stronger, like it was rising up, filling the space from both sides of the kitchen. Gentle twinkling sounds is the only way to describe it.
Something was there. I felt like whatever was passing through the kitchen was trying to get my attention along the way. I know an elderly woman died in the apartment next door a few years before and I thought maybe it’s her? It was the strangest thing and it wouldn’t let up, so I finally picked my head up and looked into the kitchen to investigate and saw nothing, but I know I could feel something was there. So, I said, “Hellll-ooo!” and actually waved my hand at the sounds in the kitchen. I just smiled and waved and went back to scrolling, and it faded out. I thought it was a little strange but thought nothing more of it and eventually went to sleep.
I woke up Tuesday feeling only slightly more normal than the days before, although still not 100% myself. It was like the weight had been lifted a little bit. I decided that I wouldn’t go to the hospital and that I would take it easy for the day. Then the phone rang. It was my mother. I answered the phone and I could hear her voice ever so faintly say my name, “Ashlee?” I asked her if everything was okay and she softly said, “I have bad news.” And in one second, a thousand thoughts raced through my head of what could have happened, but never in a million years would I have imagined what she said next. With barely a whisper, she said only two words. “Heather died.”
BOOM. The weight dropped like ten tons. I was crushed. I remember repeating, “no, no, no,” over and over and over, and then I remember screaming it over and over and over. I told her she was lying and that it wasn’t true. And she cried with just a whisper, “I’m so sorry.” It felt like the air had been sucked out of the room. In that moment, my world went upside down and all those crazy feelings I had the days before crashed back down upon me like shattered glass. I felt like my soul had been pinned to a tree and was blowing wildly in the wind. My best friend in the whole world had died.
The last time we spoke was around 11:30 my time in California, and that’s around the time she died 2 hours later in Louisiana.
I spent the next few days trying to fly home in a daze but in the back of my mind, I wondered if that heavy sense of dread over me in the days leading up to her death was my soul’s intuition telling me that something was coming. And then I wondered if that was actually Heather who was trying to get my attention in the kitchen that night the moment she died. Was that her that I waved to that night, coming to tell me goodbye? I know someone was there and I’m glad I waved and said hello as it was probably her saying goodbye. I’m not sure I would’ve wanted to know in that moment that it was her and that she had died.
Her greatest fear was to die in an awful way. She had always hoped she would just die peacefully in her sleep and that she would not know it or feel it. I feel like her death was so quick and sudden that it may not have been entirely peaceful, but at least it was natural and didn’t last long, and that she was at home in the space she felt most at peace. We had many conversations about life and death and the afterlife and the spirit world and God and Jesus and what happens when we die. We both believed that there was something to the idea of our human spirits living on after death, even if we didn’t have a definitive idea of how or for how long. But we both agreed to always try to “send a sign” or contact each other somehow if one of us were to die before the other. I choose to believe that that was her spirit passing through, coming to tell me she was gone. And all of this makes me feel good that it was a happy moment, even if I didn’t know it was her. We were so connected and besides our mother, we probably loved each other more than anyone else in the world. We were sisters.
The age-old belief is that the very essence of who we are is our spirit, our soul; and for thousands of years, humans have wondered what happens after death. It’s natural to hope that our energy, our souls carry on somehow after our death to somewhere better. The law of conservation of energy says that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another. It’s a natural, human comfort to hope that our souls, our life force, our energy transforms into something else, transferred into another realm we don’t understand as humans.
Now as I reflect on her death one year out, I do believe I feel her presence around me and that she sends me signs in her own ways that she knows will get my attention. I like to think that I can still sense her spirit, her energy around me as I continue walking through life. I can’t say for sure what happens when we die, but I’d like to think that I will see her again along with the other loved ones I’ve lost so far. I never imagined that I would have to live the rest of my life without her in it. But I hope her spirit will light my path and guide my steps in the right direction from wherever she is as I journey on here without her now. See you on the other side, sis. Love you forever.
If you would like to read the eulogy I gave at Heather’s memorial service, be prepared to laugh and cry.