Chapter One:
Helen watched the video Jane Goodall made before she died and didn’t know whether she should laugh, cry, dance, or just go back to bed. The latter sounded the best.
But Jane said everyone had a purpose. That everyone mattered. Didn’t that mean her too?
And going to bed to sleep or read all day couldn’t be what Jane meant. At least not sleep or read all the time, since that was what Helen wanted to do.
Maybe her purpose was to make a video like Jane’s. A video designed to be seen after she died. A message of hope to the world.
Hope. Sure. Hope about what? Helen thought. The world was being run by men who wanted to be kings and emperors and to have ultimate power.
It made Helen wonder if reincarnation was actually a thing, and here those tyrants were again, trying once again to rule the world.
Enough of that, Helen said to herself, what could she do about it, anyway? Just try to stay out of the way and not get caught up in the mess.
Besides, she didn’t have much time left. She was dying. Not the kind of dying that took place over a lifetime. No, the kind that had a timetable.
Which brought her back to Jane. How did Jane know she was dying? Was it because she was old, or was it some other instinct? Was it the same one that animals had as they found places to lie down and die away from everyone?
Just a few days before she died, Jane had spoken at a climate change conference. Helen wondered what she would be doing just a few days before she died. Nothing as important as that for sure. She was a nobody. A nobody that nobody knew. Her brain decided to make a song out of that.
“I’m just a nobody, that nobody knows,” she sang, even swaying a little as she did so. But no other words came to mind, so she sat down in the chair by the window, her mind a blank.
Outside her window, the red maple tree was swaying in the wind. A storm was coming. And then. There they were. Those stupid lights in the tree.
“Go away,” she said to the lights. Her hand, which always reminded her of how old she was, flung out towards the tree and the lights, hitting the window with a thump, startling a blue jay that had been sitting in one of the limbs.
The lights stayed, the jay left.
Did the blue jay see the lights? Did anyone but her see them? Helen would think it resulted from her old age and diseased body, but she’d seen them off and on her whole life.
No matter where she was, different houses, different towns, different states—the same lights. Lights dancing in trees, on the walls of her bedroom, following her to school, sitting on top of people’s heads. That had always made her laugh, and then the person would get mad at her for laughing at them.
But how was she going to tell them a light was sitting on their head?
Sometimes she wouldn’t see the lights for years, and then they would return, making her wonder what was wrong with her. When she was a young woman she had decided it was probably some kind of brain disease.
But it hadn’t been, or so she’d been told, having had all the tests that could be run on a brain to determine its health. Nope, no brain disease. Just crazy, she had eventually decided, and something to keep to herself.
Until Tony arrived. And then all hell broke loose. Or was it all heaven broke loose, or maybe heaven didn’t break loose, it overflowed over everything.
Yes, that was it. The Tony years. Heaven overflowing. One night as they lay in bed watching the moon travel across the sky, the curtains pulled back so they could see the night, she had shared her secret.
They were living far out in the country, and the sky was ablaze with stars. Not like where she had grown up, where the ambient light from houses, cars, and streets drowned out the night skies’ beauty.
And then there were lights dancing across the ceiling, and she gasped. And when he asked why, without thinking, lying in the comfort of his arms, she told him about the lights.
Her first thought was that she had ruined it all. He’d know she was crazy, and he’d leave. Or put up with her. She wasn’t sure which was worse. Instead, he had simply asked, “Where are they?”
She showed him. He looked, didn’t see them. Sighed and said, “I would give anything to see them.”
Yes, Tony. The heaven overflowing years. Gone. Never to return. But the lights, apparently, had other ideas.
***
The morning after she had watched the Jane Goodall video, Helen woke to find her bedroom filled with lights—not just a few, but dozens, maybe hundreds. The lights pulsed gently, and for the first time in all her years of seeing them, they seemed to move with a clear intention.
They formed a pattern, a direction, pointing toward the window. Then they waited.
She tried to ignore them. Made coffee. Took her pills (the ones that bought her maybe a month or two). But the lights followed her through the house, always pointing, patient.
When she finally looked out the window in the direction they were pointing, she saw them trailing away through the neighborhood, like luminous breadcrumbs only she could see.
To Helen, they seemed to call her to go somewhere. She shook her head. Tired, she said to herself. I can’t go anywhere. It’s impossible.
And then she remembered Jane’s message: everyone has a purpose. What if the lights were leading her to her purpose? What if this was what she had been waiting for all her life?
Reaching for her phone, Helen pushed the number she had become familiar with the last few months. When they answered, she postponed her hospice intake appointment.
When they said, “Are you sure?” Helen wanted to say, “No, how can I be sure? I’m probably crazy.”
Instead, she assured them she just had matters to attend to first. Her hand shook as she held the phone, another reminder of the truth of her situation.
But outside, a light pulsed, reminding her that what she was saying was the truth. Crazy or not, she had something to take care of first. After assuring them she’d reschedule soon, she hung up and took a deep breath, ignoring the pain it caused.
In the kitchen, she grabbed her pill bottles and put them neatly into a small bag. In the bedroom, she packed a suitcase, not knowing how long she’d be gone, and headed to the garage.
She hadn’t driven her car in weeks, but because she was overly cautious about everything, it was gassed up and ready to go.
A light pulsed outside the garage as she opened the door.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m coming. Crazy or not.”
The light pulsed in return, then was joined by two more. They moved down the tree-lined street. Helen cautiously followed, hoping that whatever happened, it would be a good thing.
