I woke up this morning thinking I am dying; odd as physically I feel fine. No aches and pains or lumps in the legs or migraines like Pat. While I am eagerly and impatiently waiting to see Pat again, I have no intention of joining her by my own hand. Look suicide is out of the question. There are absolutely no grounds for believing that death by that route would reunite me with her. Why should it? By suicide, I might be digging an eternally unbridgeable chasm between me and her. Disobedience is not the way to get nearer to the obedient. This thought, that I could lose her forever, brings absolute terror to my spirit. Besides there is no painless, absolutely sure, way to kill oneself. The prospect of trying, not succeeding and spending my last days an immobile invalid also terrorises me.
Part of this feeling that I am dying comes from Pat’s three predictions of our death before 2020 in her dairies for the years 2000, 2010 and 2014. She was absolutely accurate in predicting her own death even if the diagnosis on the anniversary of our first date came as a surprise and great shock. She never thought of her six siblings, she would be the first to die. She also thought the Smiths died from heart problems or strokes not cancer. Well the pancreatic cancer caused blood clots, which in turn cause the strokes which killed her.
The biggest cause of my premonition that I am dying comes from a pattern I see forming . Her diagnosis on the anniversary of our first date parallels the beginning of our earthly journey together; that diagnosis was the beginning of our heavenly journey united though I’m here on earth and she is in heaven. The palliative care period is like our intense dating up to when she went home for the Christmas holiday, only this time she went home to God. Then there is the loving moments of my feeling her kiss me the day after she died, like when she came back from Ottawa after New Year 1969. On my birthday in 1969, we were together; this year I felt her with me and discovered this on her computer: “Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.” ― Rabindranath Tagore Then around the anniversary of our engagement this year, February 14th, I felt “Something has changed! I am now aware of my wife, Patricia’s presence touching me. Started last night and grew stronger at Mass that morning. She was there with me, her presence and her spiritual strength comforting and supporting me. That is the thing:- in 1969 June 21, we were married and began our marriage. It these events are indeed paralleling 1968/69 doesn’t this mean I join Pat in heaven on June 21, 2017?
Wait there is more, Pat began Advent by being the fifth reader at Holy Saviour’s Advent Lessons and Carols service on the first Sunday of Advent. Pat died on the day after the Feast of the Epiphany (the 12th day of Christmas), so on the first day of Epiphany. I am expecting this Easter Sunday to be something really special. I expect some sort of revelation about our place in heaven and about joining Pat in heaven to spend all eternity with God. But if it doesn’t come I won’t be unhappy because it will come in time. I’ll die when it is my time to die.