ambulance at the hospital, doctors pronounced him dead. He was only
sixty-one years old.
I remember seeing my mother in anguish at the funeral, but her grief
didn’t end there. As I got older, I’d sometimes catch her in prayer, with
tears gently sliding down her cheeks. When I asked her what was wrong,
she would share with me, “I’m worried about whether Pop went to heaven.”
We didn’t find out until much later, in 2006, from my Aunt Connie, about
a special service Pop had attended only two days before his death—a
service that might hold answers to my grandfather’s eternal destiny.
The date was July 13, 1975, and the place was Johnson, Kansas. Mom
and Aunt Connie had an uncle named Hubert Caldwell. I liked Uncle
Hubert. Not only was Hubert a simple country preacher, but he loved to talk
and was the type who was easy to talk to. (I also enjoyed Hubert because
he was short, shorter than me. Looking down to visit with anyone happens
so rarely for me that even the opportunity feels like a privilege.)
Uncle Hubert had invited Pop, Connie, and many others to revival
services he was leading in his little country church. From behind his pulpit
at the Church of God of Apostolic Faith, Hubert closed his message by
asking if anyone wanted to give his life to Christ. Uncle Hubert saw Pop
raise his hand. But somehow, that story never made it back to my mom,
and she worried about it off and on for the next twenty-eight years.
After we got home from Benkelman, I called my mom and told her what
Colton had said. That was on a Friday. The next morning, she pulled into
our driveway, having made the trip all the way from Ulysses to hear what
her grandson had to say about her dad. It surprised us how quickly she
arrived.
“Boy, she beelined it up here!” Sonja said.
Around the dinner table that evening, Sonja and I listened as Colton told
his grandma about Jesus’ rainbow horse and spending time with Pop. The
thing that surprised Mom most was the way Colton told the story: Pop had
recognized his great-grandson even though Colton was born decades
after Pop died. That got Mom wondering whether those who have gone
ahead of us know what’s happening on earth. Or is it that in heaven, we’ll
know our loved ones—even those we didn’t get to meet in life—by some
next-life way of knowing we don’t enjoy on earth?