The boundary between worlds

I am going to tell you a story that really happened to a close friend of mine. All names will be changed, of course, in order to protect the innocent, as I fondly like to say.

My name is Cleo and I am 32 years old now. I have a very dear friend, named Pam, whom I’ve known for 10 years now. She is older than me, being at the ripe old age of 56, but we get along just fine despite the age difference. Making friends my age is kind of difficult for me, seeing as I am a very head strong kind of woman and compromise doesn’t come easy to me.

Being friends with Pam was the easiest thing in the world: she is kind, smart, talks about anything and everything with you, she is good looking, helps you out when you’re in a bind, doesn’t say bad things about people even if she thinks that’s the case and she is a perfect diplomat.

The only aspect of her life where things didn’t exactly go fantastic for her was in the men’s department. Being the softest soul you’ll ever meet she had the tendency to let some things slide for the good of the relationship, which, of course, was never in her favour. A lot of her relationships went downhill because of this, but she learned some things the hard way because, as my sister used to say: “Life will keep slapping you senseless, until you learn what you actually need to learn, stop making the same mistakes over and over and become a better version of yourself.”

But life is kind to good people and Pam finally found a nice man who respects her, loves her, helps her, cooks and cleans with her and it seems to be going very well so far. Keeping a lot of fingers crossed that they will live happily ever after.

And now back to the story. When Pam and I were out for drinks one evening, she told me something that left me completely baffled since I had never heard anything that “paranormal” before.

Pam was born with a liver problem that she knew about ever since she was little, but, unbeknownst to her, there was another issue with her uterus that she didn’t find out about until later on, when she got pregnant with her baby boy. Doctors said that she really needed to hold on to her first pregnancy because if that one didn’t work, neither will any ever again after that. A painful truth, unfortunately...

She wanted to have babies like you wouldn’t believe, but she experienced a lot of health issues with her pregnancy from the start. All the doctors she went to told her that it was going to be a risky pregnancy and at a certain point she would have to answer a very difficult question: “If it ever came to it, who would you rather live: you or the baby?” Such a question is devastating for a mother, especially one who wanted a child more than anything else in the world. She prayed to God night and day for her baby to live and be healthy and for her to have as many days with her child as possible. Faith was and still is a powerful calming solution for her when facing fearful odds and I understand that completely.

The day finally came when she went into labour and the medical staff told her to mentally prepare herself in case things didn’t go the way she planned to. She was losing a lot of blood during the delivery and struggling to keep it together, when she suddenly felt like the doctors’ voices were getting harder and harder to hear and it was difficult to understand what they were saying, like she had cotton in her ears.

She began to slowly drift into a dreamlike state and she thought she was falling asleep when suddenly the image in the room changed.

She found herself standing in a very long corridor that had black and white tiles on the floor, like a chess board, “Like the choices in her life”, as she phrased it. At the very far end of the corridor she could hear footsteps approaching incredibly slowly, footsteps that sounded metallic, like a woman was walking in thin high heels. After she stood there watching and listening for a while, she was able to make out a dark figure in the distance, slowly approaching her. She couldn’t tell what it was, but when it finally got closer, Pam saw that it was a hooded being, dressed in a very long black wide robe, which had great white wings. She couldn’t see its face at all, couldn’t hear it breathing and it didn’t talk or make any kind of sound, except for the metallic one when it was walking.

After it finally reached her, the being stopped and stood on Pam’s left side and waited there, without making any other movements. I think Pam was absolutely certain that it had come for her in order to take her to Heaven and she was willing to accept that fate, but, suddenly, she heard a loud cry coming from her right side, a very loud cry, actually, that wouldn’t stop and her attention was instantly drawn to it. Right then, the creature suddenly started to flap its wings really fast and began walking towards her right side to see what was happening, like it was somehow concerned that Pam’s fate was changing. The cries were coming from Pam’s baby. While she was in that “dream world” her baby had been born and had begun crying louder and louder, irrevocably drawing Pam’s attention to it, completely forgetting about the winged creature standing next to her.

The baby’s cries managed to wake Pam up from her sleep state. She felt extremely weak, like a train had hit her and her doctor explained that she had bled so much during delivery that all of the staff had been worried that she wasn’t going to make it no matter what they would have done. Everyone in the delivery room thought it was nothing short of a miracle that they were able to save both her and her baby boy just in time.

Needless to say, Pam was overjoyed that she was able to hold her lovely baby in her arms and she got out of that ordeal alive. However, she said something that stayed with me until today: the winged creature started to walk back to where it originally came from after Pam had the baby, but it didn’t leave immediately. It took 3 days for it to completely disappear from Pam’s hearing range. It walked incredibly slowly and Pam could hear its metallic footsteps loud and clear all that time. It was as if the creature was waiting to see if Pam’s health was going to deteriorate or not, or, perhaps, the baby’s. It had come there for one of them and it was taking its time leaving, in case something bad was going to happen to them within the range of those 3 days.

I thought that was scary, the thought that something or someone is waiting for you after you die, in order to escort you to a different place, whether you want to or not, the idea that you aren’t born alone and you do not die alone either.

Time went by and both Pam and her son had healthy happy lives. After her son became a man and Pam told him the story of his birth, he said with the utmost certainty that it was he that made the creature leave with his baby screams. He said that he remembered telling the creature to go away and leave his mother alone because he was there and he would be her protector from then on.

That left me speechless at the time, because I didn’t know what to believe. How could a baby remember anything before the age of 3? That wasn’t scientifically possible, was it? Or maybe it was just what he thinks happened without actually recalling the event itself, a belief deeply embedded in his core. No matter what the truth is, Pam’s experience left me wondering: ” How many things are there really out there that we know nothing about and how do they actually affect us? How many things aren’t we able to see, but are around us every day and night and change our lives, or intervene for us in order to keep us safe? Is there a Heaven, is there a Hell, is there an afterlife, or just complete emptiness after we pass?”

There are so many questions still left unanswered that we will probably discover later on, after we are no longer on this earth. Until that day comes, all we can do is live and live well, close to our loved ones, do good where and when we can and try to be as happy as humanly possible.