Ahead

I never know who awaits me in the Sanctuary. A teacher, a sister, an aunt, a leader - they all end up in the Sanctuary, waiting, waiting, waiting for a time. Some sit and wait patiently, knowing I or someone of my kin will be along, some stand and stare at the stained-glass windows, some pace, some try desperately to grab things, throw them, break them, scream; eventually they realize the futility.

When I enter, they all stare. Some start to try to explain right away - I let them.

“I didn’t see him coming through the intersection.”

“I was already Stage 4.”

“I couldn’t stop him.”

“I got sick last year and I never got better.”

“I couldn’t stop.”

“I don’t know what happened.”

They need to try to explain. It’s not for me - it’s for them. They need to try to make sense of how they got here. For many, they blink and they’re here. Just like that. Royal red carpets and golden, shimmering lights shining in their eyes. Bells attached to the marble pillars twinkle softly as a draft flows through the hall. They look up but no matter how hard they squint or how long they stare, they’ll never be able to see the stone ceiling, too high for even the strong, warm lights to reach. They blink, and they’re here, sitting on a dark oak pew that smells of foreign familiarity, all frankincense and dust.

Some don’t try to explain. They wait for me to sit down next to them or stand with them at a window. No one speaks and I know they’re waiting for me to tell them what happened, what’s happening, or what’s supposed to happen next. I can do none of those things; it’s not my purpose. They all start speaking eventually. Some take longer than others, but that’s alright.

A few don’t care much for what happened. They care for what happens next - and sometimes not to themselves.

“Will I see my husband?”

“Was my friend okay?”

“Has anyone told my mother?”

“Did she see the blood? Please tell me she didn’t see the blood.”

I answer what I can. Most times, I don’t know any more than they do. In some instances, I can offer words.

“Your husband will be here,” I say. “Soon.”

“Your friend has a concussion,” I say. ’She’ll live.”

“Your mother is coming,” I say.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “She saw the blood.”

It can take days for the family to find the right Sanctuary and travel there. That’s alright. Sometimes they’re there within the hour. A man was sick once, sick for a very, very long time. His family wasted no time. I had barely sat down with him in the Sanctuary and he had barely begun speaking when the large bell at the front of the hall tolled. I looked at him, still as pale and sickly as he had been in his last seconds. “Are you ready?”

His eyes had widened. “What if I’m not?”

The bell tolled again. I could hear muffled voices beyond the impossibly large double doors at the far end of the hall.

I stood. “You’ll need to be.”

Spirits will wait impossibly long times to have their final words with their loved ones. A day, two days, a month? There is no back, only forwards - ahead. Even the impatient ones learn to be wary of charging too quickly into the next stage. Even the self-inflicted ones will wait to explain.

I’ve only had one Spirit who didn’t wait. As quickly as he appeared in the Sanctuary, he was gone. I never spoke with him, only got a glimpse of brown hair and brown eyes. A woman arrived a day later. A mother, she was waiting for her son. “Could I wait in the Sanctuary? If he’s not here yet?” I had no strength to deny her, already in dismay over the Spirit setting his own Departure before I could intervene. I cannot describe the regret and guilt I felt and still feel to this day, allowing her to sit in the Sanctuary for days, without food and without complaint, whipping her head at every sound, convinced it was him, finally come to speak with her. I sometimes wonder if it would have been better to break her heart myself; it could not have been worse than what he did to her. Should I have told her to leave? “He left already,” I might have said. “He didn’t wait. He didn’t want to speak to you. He didn’t even want to speak to me.” Would that have been better? Her eyes will never stop haunting me. The same brown as his.

“Well, you’ll call me if he shows up, won’t you? Perhaps I got the Sanctuary wrong.” She shuffled out of the double doors without waiting for my reply. I’m grateful. I don’t know what I would have said.

Today, I sit in the sanctuary with a man. A suit jacket is crumpled in a pile beside him and his polished shoes catch the light from the lanterns, reflecting into my eyes. His face is buried in his hands, his hair disheveled, his chest heaving. Every few minutes, a sob escapes him. He mumbles into his hands, “I thought it was the flu.” He appears to calm down every few minutes, only to launch into another round of mumbling seconds later. “A fever. That’s all. A fever. Oh my god, it was just a fever, I can’t - no, no, I can’t!” He tries to grab my hand and when he cannot seem to close his fingers around mine, it only makes him more desperate. “Put me back! You people must have a way. You see things. Put me back. Make it right.”

I don’t know how to tell him that somehow, in some way, this is right, in a way that neither he nor I will ever be able to explain. I spend hours with him and eventually, he finds some comfort in speaking about his family. He has a wife, he says, and a daughter. He was an attorney and he made good money. He had been to a Sanctuary for his mother-in-law’s Departure. He admits that he never went into the actual Sanctuary hall. He waited outside in the foyer with the baby. He admits it was an excuse. “The place made me feel so.. cold. I made Madeline go in alone.” He buries his head in his hands again. “I shouldn’t have made her go alone.” His head shoots up and he stares at me, a brand new wave of despair crashing over him. “But she’ll be alone today, won’t she?”

We sit for several more hours. He never wanted to be an attorney, he says. He wanted to do something real. “What wasn’t real about it?” I ask.

“I chased cash. What was I thinking? I could have been- I could have helped people! I could have- I could have changed the world, saved lives. I sat in a fucking office. I didn’t even think about it. I just did it.”

“How would you have saved lives? What would you have done?”

“I, I-” He shakes his head. “I could have- I should have volunteered. At a, a soup kitchen. A shelter, I don’t know, shit, I don’t know.”

I nod. “A soup kitchen.” We leave the subject at that.

More hours pass. I see the sun beginning to rise behind the stained-glass and it’s quiet in the Sanctuary. The man is sitting back now, staring up, impossibly still. The large bell tolls in the front foyer and, slicing through the silence, it even makes me startle a bit. He looks at me, tears welling his eyes again. “Do you think they’re both here?”

I want to reassure him and say, “I’m sure they are,” but instead I stand and nod my head and say, “I’ll go find out.” I’ve convinced myself that this response is just as kind.

I slip out of the back of the Sanctuary and there, by the foyer doors, is a small, wide-eyed version of the man I just spent hours sitting in miserable silence with. I’m so taken aback by the resemblance that I barely notice the taller woman standing behind the child until she speaks. “Is- is Adam here?” I look up to meet her eyes and see that she’s been crying. This isn’t uncommon. Her cheeks are red and irritated. She’s been rubbing her face. Her eyes are pink, strained and her hair is out of place. If she were me, she might find it funny how similar her and her husband are in this moment, all despair and disheveled mourning. A purse is slung haphazardly across her body and as she waits for me to respond, she pulls her daughter closer to her, an attempt to find something tangible left of her husband.

I finally nod. “You’ve done this before?” I ask her softly.

“I- my mother, when- a few years ago-” She pauses and her face scrunches up like she’s going to burst into hysterics. I place a hand on her arm so she won’t say any more.

“I know. He told me. It’s alright.” I look down at her daughter, staring directly up at me and blinking curiously. I gesture down to the girl. “May I?” The woman releases her hold on the child and nods, vigorously wiping tears.

“Hello,” I say. I’ve never been very comfortable with children, especially the younger ones. She continues to stare up at me.

“Do you know where we are?”

She shrugs and looks around. “Here to see daddy. He’s going.”

I look up at her mother and the poor woman has a brand new set of tears running down her face. She nods at me.

“Well, yes.”

The little girl shrugs again and digs the toes of her shoes into the plush carpet beneath her. “He’s going away.”

I nod again. “Yes. Away.” I pause. For a moment, we’re suspended there, the two of us, the girl’s mother seemingly in another world. I look down at this girl, this lovely little girl, who can’t possibly understand this event in her life just yet. When she looks back on this, years later, will she remember it the way it happened? Will she remember me, looming above her in a crimson robe? Will she remember her father’s last words to her?

I’m about to ask the woman if she’s ready to speak with her husband when the girl squeaks, “Do you know where he’s going?”

This is the one question I dread. The people who visit the Sanctuary expect my kind to know everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen. We have no such omniscience. Once a Spirit has completed their Departure, they are as gone to us as they are to their loved ones and everyone else on this plane. We can see them and communicate with them in their transitionary state between the death of their body and their birth into whatever awaits them. I have no knowledge of where they go, I get no glimpses into whatever door they step through. No one has come back to tell us what happens. I’m not even sure that they could, if they wanted to. The Departure, as far as we understand from centuries of tending Sanctuaries and the Spirits who pass through them, is a final, irreversible passage. We cannot and should not force a Spirit to go. They go in their own time and they go of their own doing. Sometimes they just need someone, anyone - their family, their friends, me - to listen to what they have to say before they go. Our job is not to imagine what they face when they step out of this life - our job is to guide them willingly to it.

I realize that I’ve been silent. The little girl is still staring, her eyes frantically analyzing my face for any answer to her age-old question. Her mother, still standing a way behind her, has no awareness that her daughter has attempted to solve the great mystery that myself and my kind have been bound to. She stares unblinkingly at the great double doors of the Sanctuary hall. I look down at the girl and meet her eyes.

“I do not,” I begin, but I pause. I hear the words of a mentor echo through my mind. Never speculate. Never try to imagine what lies ahead. I take a deep breath and continue, “but I imagine it must be a very grand journey. And your father, he would never leave for his journey without saying goodbye to you. I think sometimes journeys must be frightening to start, though. Perhaps your father is nervous of all the things he might learn and see. So when you speak to him, you will listen closely because everything he will say is important. And when it’s your turn to speak, you must tell him only the truth and tell him reassuring things. He needs to see how strong and brave you are and then he’ll be brave, too. You’ll be his greatest strength, so when he gets nervous on his journey, he’ll remember you - and he’ll be stronger.”

The child blinks quickly a few times and my stomach sinks. Perhaps I’ve said too much. This is why I prefer the older children. But a tiny, sad almost-smile appears on the girl’s face and she nods slowly. “An adventure,” she whispers. She looks back at her mother and asks, “Can we go see him now?”

Her mother snaps out of her hypnosis and looks at me for confirmation. I nod.

“Of course we can, sweet,” she says, almost steadily enough not to betray the new wave of tears that’s no doubt about to take hold.

They both stand behind me as I face the grand double doors. The mother takes her daughter’s hand. I gently open the doors and step out of the way to allow them to walk in. The man, at the front of the hall, turns around and sees them. He chokes back a sob as the little girl lets go of her mother’s hand and begins to run down the aisle. From their vantage point, and mine, this father and husband are bathed in the warm golden glow of the morning sun catching through the mountainous stained glass behind him. I see the mother start running too, overcome by the fervent need to simply be close to her husband.

I look away, stepping backwards out of the hall and shutting the doors. The golden glow disappears from the foyer. I sit in a large-backed red chair to the side of the doors and prepare to give them all the minutes, hour, days they need to send him off into what I suddenly desperately, desperately hope is the grandest adventure he’ll ever see.