“I almost forgot to tell you; I saw Joe last night,” Keith said, turning toward me as he opened the sliding door that led to the backyard early one Saturday morning in 1998.  He’d be out there all day; he loved working in the yard.

“We talked for a long time.  He looked great, he had his weight back, and his hair too – remember his hair?  He said he’s busy and he’s happy and I shouldn’t worry about him.”

Then my husband put on his shades, grabbed his ball cap, lit a cigarette and attempted to head outside.  I jumped up from the kitchen table and grabbed the back of his T-shirt.

“Hold it mister.  You lay something like that on me and then expect me to wait all day to hear the rest?”  He’d be out there past dark if I let him go.

I poured him a cup of coffee, set it on the table, pointed to a chair and said, “Park it.”  He laughed and sat down.  “Now tell me about Joe.”

Joe.  His beloved cousin, same age as Keith.  They’d grown up together in southern Ohio and considered themselves brothers.  Joe had been dead nearly two years.

***** 

Keith was my diametric opposite in almost every way, in matters both large and small.  This included how he perceived the world around him.  He tolerated answers to his questions in only two colors:  black and white.  He valued precision and accuracy and loathed ambiguity.  His fine mind was forever processing, searching, looking for the shortest distance from point A to point B.

He was a numbers man; his livelihood depended on it.  Clear-headed, pragmatic, quick thinking, others frequently sought his advice, both personally and professionally.  And not just because they trusted him.  He was kind, humane and non-judgmental in the extreme.

It's important to know this about Keith because one should always consider the source before deciding to accept or reject something as truth.  Because I am the opposite of Keith, this story might not be deemed credible if it were my own.  But it’s not mine and it still thrills me each time I recall it.

***** 

Seeing them together, it was nearly impossible to believe they had anything in common let alone adored each other. They were quite a contrast:  Keith, the clean-cut businessman in a suit and tie and Joe, a wild-looking biker.  Tall and powerfully built, he towered over Keith.  He was covered in tattoos and had a mane of long blond rock-star hair. But he also had the same sparkling blue eyes, easy laugh and sweet manner.  When Keith introduced me to him for the first time Joe winked and said, “Don’t be fooled by appearances; we’re more alike than we look.”

We were living in another state when Joe called him one May evening.  Within minutes of saying hello, I saw Keith’s face crumple.  At 32, his cousin had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. His doctor had been treating him for what he thought was a skin infection but by the time he was correctly diagnosed with melanoma it had metastasized and spread like wildfire through his body.  The family reunion that was going to be held in late August of that year was hastily moved up to June.  That’s how little time he had.

At the reunion, I couldn’t bear to look at him; wasted and pale, he could hardly stand without help. The beautiful hair was long gone.  But his eyes still sparkled when he saw Keith and the two of them talked for a long time.

On the drive home all Keith would say was, “He’s okay with it.  He’s not afraid and he’s ready.  He’s okay.”  Joe died three weeks later.

***** 

Now he was telling me he’d found himself walking in a park, the most beautiful park he’d ever been in. He was strolling alongside what he described as a canal and he said in the distance, it curved out of sight, under a little bridge.  The grass, the trees, the air heavy with the fragrance of flowers, the warm sun, everything was so beautiful and intense. 

“Not just real,” he told me.  “Hyper real.  More real than sitting here in this kitchen, talking to you."

He was taking it all in, enjoying himself, when a small red boat floated by in the canal on his left and someone said, “Hey Bud, whatcha’ doin’ here?”

It was Joe, and he looked like he had before he got sick.  They both laughed and Keith leaned over and hugged him, hard.  Told him how good he looked.  They walked and talked for a while.  He lost track of time but he said they caught up on things and Joe told him he was busy and happy.  He told Keith not to worry about him, he was doing fine.

Eventually, they got to the curve near the bridge, where the canal veered off.  Joe stopped the boat and said, “Well Bud, I gotta be going.”

“Yeah, me too."

Then Joe patted the seat next to him and said, “Want to come with me?”

I’d been rapt until this point, holding my breath.  Now I felt a chill.

“What did you tell him?”  I whispered it.

“What do you think I told him - I’m still here aren’t I?  I know what he was asking,” Keith said and smiled.  “I told him, ‘I’d go with you but Margaret would kill me.  And I’ve still got too much to do here.’ ”

They hugged again and shook hands.  Joe said “Catch you later,” and Keith watched him paddle under the bridge until he was gone.  Then he was home.

He held up his hand before I could get the question out, even though I believed everything he’d said.

“It was not a dream.  I know the difference between a dream and reality.  I can still feel the sun, hear the birds, smell those flowers. I can feel the grip of his hand when I shook it.  It was strong and good.”

He got up and and walked to the door, then turned to look at me.  He came back to where I still sat, leaned down and kissed me.  My face must have given me away.  Then he said, “Now don’t obsess over his question.  I know how your mind works.  Remember - I had a choice and I’m still here.”  

I made my peace with Joe’s question and it even comforted me, knowing that maybe there is a decision involved when we leave this world.  Until that moment I'd always believed some things were beyond our control.  I pictured an angry unpleasant little man in charge of a gigantic lighted control board randomly flipping off switches above peoples' names. Keith’s amazing experience confirmed what I already believed about life and death in a tangible way but it also added another element.  It would have been enough for me had it ended there.

But it didn’t.

***** 

Joe had a younger sister, Kristy.  She’d moved to South Carolina after high school and stayed.  She married a man named David and they had a little girl.  By some grim coincidence while her brother was fighting a losing battle with cancer so was her husband.  David had non-Hodgkins lymphoma.  He died not long after Joe, at the age of 29, shortly after the birth of their daughter.

Kristy came to Ohio to visit her father some time after Keith told me about seeing Joe and we were able to go out with her one evening since we'd moved back.  Keith and I, his sisters and their husbands, Kristy and some others arranged to meet at a restaurant/bar.  I’d never met her and Keith hadn’t seen her in years.  On the way there he asked me if I thought he should tell her about meeting Joe; he wasn’t sure what she’d think of it. 

I said, “I think you should.  If it were my brother I’d want to know.”

Physically she looked nothing like Joe although you could see the resemblance in her face.  She was pretty and petite with delicate features and I remember thinking, illogically, that she didn’t look strong enough to have borne two such terrible losses so close together.

After the flurry of introductions, catching up, ordering drinks and food and lots of reminiscing, when there was a lull in the conversation, Keith cleared his throat and said, “So Kris, what would you say if I told you I’d seen Joe recently.”

Some people laughed but Kristy looked at Keith and said, “I’d want to know all about it.  Tell me.”

So he did.  All eyes were on him as he began to describe the setting but he didn’t provide as much detail as he had with me, assuming she’d want to hear about her brother.  He briefly mentioned how beautiful the surroundings were, then touched on the canal, the bridge, and the boat. Then he started to tell her how good Joe looked.

She’d been staring at him silently, her eyes huge, but when he mentioned the boat she made a strangled sound, covered her mouth and started to cry.

Keith immediately stopped talking and began apologizing. “I’m sorry Kris, I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said in alarm, but she lunged across the table, grabbed his forearm with both hands and said, “No, you don’t understand.  Tell me more about that park.  And the boat.”

She grilled him like a DA, insisting he go back to the beginning, demanding details about everything: the canal, the trees, the smell, the bridge.  And the boat. Was he sure it was red?  What shade of red, what it was made of, what the interior looked like.

Her hands might have been small but they were gripping his arm so tightly they’d end up leaving marks.  Her eyes never left his face.

Keith answered her every question with unerring accuracy.  He didn’t waver on anything; he gave her details he hadn’t given me, little things that wouldn’t have mattered.

When he finished to her satisfaction, she exhaled, finally let go of his arm, leaned back in her chair and asked about Joe.  She was crying softly.

In the flurry of questioning she’d waited until the end to hear about her brother.  “Don’t think I forgot him,” she said with a laugh.  “I’ll tell you why in just a minute.”

Everyone at the table had been staring at the two of them, hanging on Keith’s every word.  Now we waited on Kristy.

“Keith,” she said in the soft drawl she’d developed after living there many years, “Have you ever been to South Carolina?”

He took a long swallow of his beer and thought a moment.

“No, I’ve never been.”

“Well let me tell you something.  You were there.  You and Joe met in a park that’s close to where I live and it’s exactly as you described.  It’s pretty special to me,” she added and wiped her eyes.

“David and I had our first date in that park.  We both loved it; it’s as beautiful as you say it is.  We spent a lot of time there.  We kind of thought of it as ‘our place.’”

“And that red boat, the one my brother was in?  David proposed to me in one of those boats.  Under the bridge you saw.”

By now several people were crying but Keith was smiling.  “I’ll be damned,” he said.  Then he added, “There’s something else.”

And he told her about Joe’s question.

She burst into tears.  “I asked him to help David,” she sobbed.  “At the end, I prayed for him to come get David, when he was ready.  I begged him to make it easy for him, because I was afraid he’d be scared.  He was in a coma and I just kept praying to Joe to be there for him.  I wanted him to see someone familiar, so it would be easy for him to go.  It was so hard for him to leave us.”

Now everyone at the table was wiping their eyes.  It was beyond astounding.  There were no words for it.  People at other tables were staring openly at us but no one cared.

“I always wondered if he heard me and now I know he did.”

It would have been more than enough for me had it ended there.

But it didn’t.

***** 

Less than two years after that evening with Kristy, Keith joined his cousin and David.  Of course the first thing I thought of was Joe and I willed myself to believe he’d come for Keith in the little red boat and this time Keith had been ready, that he'd chosen of his own free will.  I clung to my belief like a lifeline and I prayed for proof, some experience like he’d had, to confirm it for me.

A year after he died my prayer was answered.  I received my indisputable, incontrovertible proof, in exquisite, hyper real detail just as Keith had with Joe.  And although he was indeed ready, it wasn’t Joe who came for him. 

But it's my story and I am the diametric opposite of Keith.  I welcome answers not only in shades of gray, but also in every color of the rainbow.  In my world, two and two only occasionally add up to four, I make decisions based on the patterns of leaves on the ground or which way the wind blows, and I prefer to get to point B via points N, U, and T.  No one ever consults me for advice. 

Best to always consider the source.