1 Pop Pop On a sunny Wednesday afternoon in August, when I was eleven years old, my sister, my brother, and I were splashing around in the three-foot-deep aboveground swimming pool in the backyard of our home on Long Island. There were only a handful of days left before the start of school, and we were trying to squeeze every last ounce of fun out of the summer. My mother came out to say she was going to see our grandparents in their home in Roslyn, about a fifty-minute drive away. For years I''d gone with her on trips to see my grandparents, and I''d always loved going. But as I got older other activities got in the way, so sometimes my mother would go by herself and leave us behind. On this beautiful summer day she knew she had no hope of getting any of us out of the pool. "You kids have fun," she called out to us. "I''ll be back in a few hours.
" And that should have been that. But then, all of a sudden, I panicked. I felt it deep in my bones. Sheer, inexplicable, ice-cold panic. I shot straight up in the pool and screamed out to my mother. "Wait!" I yelled. "I have to come with you!" My mother laughed. "It''s okay, stay," she said.
"Enjoy yourself, it''s a beautiful day." But I was already paddling furiously to the edge of the pool, my brother and sister watching and wondering what was wrong with me. "No!" I hollered. "I want to come with you! Please, please wait for me." "Laura, it''s okay. . . .
" "No, Mom, I have to come with you!" My mother stopped laughing. "All right, calm down," she said. "Come inside, get changed, I''ll wait." I ran inside dripping wet, threw on some clothes, dashed back out, and got in the car still half drenched, still utterly panicked. One hour later we pulled into my grandparents'' driveway, and I saw my grandfather--whom I called Pop Pop--waving at us from the back porch. Only then, when I got to see him and hug him, did the panic subside. I spent the next few hours on the porch with Pop Pop, talking, laughing, singing, and telling jokes. When it was time to go I gave him a kiss and a hug and I told him, "I love you.
" I never saw him alive again. I didn''t know Pop Pop had been feeling weak and tired. The grown-ups would never tell me something like that. When I was with him that day he was his usual self--warm, funny, playful. He must have summoned all his strength to appear healthy to me. Three days after my visit, Pop Pop went to see his doctor. The doctor gave him the devastating news that he had leukemia. Three weeks later, Pop Pop was gone.
When my mother sat my sister, my brother, and me on the couch and gently told us Pop Pop had passed, I felt a blitz of emotions. Shock. Confusion. Disbelief. Anger. Profound sadness. A deep, dreadful feeling of already missing him. Worst of all, I felt a terrible, shattering sense of guilt.
The instant I learned my grandfather was gone, I understood precisely why I''d been in such a panic to see him. I had known he was going to die. Of course, I couldn''t have really known. I didn''t even know he was sick. And yet, somehow, I did know it. Why else would I have demanded to see him? But if I did know it, why hadn''t I articulated it--to Pop Pop, to my mother, or even to myself? I hadn''t had a clear thought or even an inkling that anything was wrong with my grandfather, and I hadn''t gone to visit him with any kind of understanding that it would be the last time I''d see him. All I had was a mysterious sense of knowing. I didn''t understand it at all, but it made me feel horribly uncomfortable, as if I were somehow complicit in Pop Pop''s passing.
I felt like I had some connection to the cruel forces that had claimed his life, and that made me feel unimaginably guilty. I started to think something must be seriously wrong with me. I''d never encountered anyone who could sense when someone was going to die, and now that it had happened to me, I couldn''t even begin to understand it. All I understood was that it was a horrible thing to know. I became convinced I wasn''t normal; I was cursed. One week later, I had a dream. In the dream I was all grown up and I was an actress. I was living in Australia.
I was wearing a long, colorful, nineteenth-century dress, and I felt beautiful. All of a sudden I felt a staggering concern for my family--the same family I had in real life. In the dream I felt my chest seize and I collapsed to the floor. I was aware I was dying. Yet I didn''t wake up--the dream kept going. I felt myself leave my physical body and become a free-floating consciousness, capable of observing everything around me. I saw my family gathered together around my body in the room where I''d fallen, all of them weeping. I was so upset to see them in such pain that I tried to call out to them.
"Don''t worry, I am alive! Death doesn''t exist!" I said. But it was no use, because I didn''t have a voice anymore--they just couldn''t hear me. All I could do was project my thoughts to them. And then I began to drift away from them, like a helium balloon that someone let go of, and I floated way, way above them, into a darkness--a dense, peaceful darkness with beautiful, twinkling lights all around. I felt a strong feeling of calm and contentment wash over me. And precisely at that moment, I saw an incredible sight. I saw Pop Pop. He was there, in the space just ahead of me, though not in his physical body but rather in spirit--a spirit that was beautifully, undeniably, entirely his.
My consciousness instantly recognized his consciousness. He was a point of light, like a bright star in the dark night sky, but the light was powerful and magnetic, drawing me toward it, filling me with love. It was as if I was seeing Pop Pop''s true self--not his earthly body, but rather this greater, inner light that was truly him. I was seeing his soul energy. I understood that Pop Pop was safe, and that he was in a beautiful place filled with love. I understood he was home, and in that instant I also understood that this was the place that we all come from, the place we all belong. He had returned to the place he''d come from. Realizing that this was Pop Pop and that he still existed in some way, I felt less sad.
I felt great love, great comfort, and, in that moment of recognition, great happiness. And just before I was drawn all the way home with Pop Pop, I felt something closing around me and pulling me back. Then I woke up. I sat up in bed. My face was wet. I was crying. But I wasn''t sad. These were tears of joy.
I was crying because I''d gotten to see Pop Pop! I lay in bed and cried for a long time. I had been shown that dying doesn''t mean losing the people we love. I knew that Pop Pop was still present in my life. I was so thankful for my dream. It was only years later--many years--that I gathered enough experience to understand what Pop Pop''s passing and the events surrounding it signified in my life. What I had sensed in that swimming pool was the beginning of the voyage of Pop Pop''s soul to some other place. Because I loved him so much--because I was connected to him in such a powerful way--my soul could sense that his soul was about to go on a journey. And sensing that wasn''t a curse at all.
It allowed me to spend that one, last magical afternoon with Pop Pop. If that wasn''t a gift, what is? And the dream? The dream convinced me of one thing--that Pop Pop wasn''t gone. He was just someplace else. But where? Where, exactly, was he? I couldn''t answer that when I was eleven. But over time, I came to realize Pop Pop was on the Other Side What do I mean by the Other Side? I have this simple analogy to explain it. Think of your body as a car--new at first, then older, then really old. What happens to cars when they get really old? They get discarded. But we, the humans, are not discarded with the cars.
We move on. We keep going. We are greater than the car, and we were never defined by the car. We are defined by what we take with us once we leave the car behind. We outlast the car. Everything in my experience tells me that we outlast our bodies. We move on. We keep going.
We are bigger than our bodies. What defines us is what we take with us once we leave our bodies behind--our joys, our dreams, our loves, our consciousness. We are not bodies with souls. We are souls with bodies. Our souls endure. Our consciousness endures. The energy that powers us endures. The Other Side, then, is the place our souls go when our bodies give out.
That raises a lot of questions. Is the Other Side a place? Is it a sphere? A realm? Is it material or spiritual? Is it a way station or a final destination? What does it look like? How does it feel? Is it full of golden clouds and pearly gates? Are there angels? Is God there? Is the Other Side heaven? I came by my understanding of the Other Side slowly, and even today I''m sure I know only a small part of what there is to know about it. But we don''t need to fully envision or understand the Other Side in order to take great comfort from it. In fact, so many of us already believe our loved ones who''ve passed are still with us--in spirit, in our hearts, called back into our lives through memories. And that belief is endlessly nourishing. The reality of what happens when our loved ones pass on, however, is infinitely more comforting than most people realize, because these departed souls are much closer than we.