Proof of Heaven

Saturday passed with the ongoing vigil around my bed and the hopeful
conversations between family and doctors. It all seemed like a half-
hearted attempt to keep hope alive. Everyone’s reserves were more empty
than they’d been the day before.
On Saturday night, after taking our mother, Betty, back to her hotel
room, Phyllis stopped by our house. It was pitch dark, with not a light in a
window, and as she slogged through the soaking mud it was hard for her
to keep to the flagstones. By now it had been raining for five days
straight, ever since the afternoon of my entrance into the ICU. Relentless
rain like this was very unusual for the highlands of Virginia, where in
November it is usually crisp, clear, and sunny, like the previous Sunday,
the last day before my attack. Now that day seemed so long ago, and it
felt like the sky had always been spewing rain. When would it ever stop?
Phyllis unlocked the door and switched on the lights. Since the
beginning of the week, people had been coming by and dropping off food,
and though the food was still coming in, the half-hopeful/half-worried
atmosphere of rallying for a temporary emergency had turned darker and
more desperate. Our friends, like our family, knew that the time of any
hope for me at all was nearing its end.
For a second, Phyllis thought of lighting a fire, but right on the heels
of that thought came another, unwelcome one. Why bother? She suddenly
felt more exhausted and depressed than she could ever remember feeling.
She lay down on the couch in the wood-paneled study and fell into a deep
sleep.
Half an hour later, Sylvia and Peggy returned, tiptoeing by the study
when they saw Phyllis collapsed there. Sylvia went down to the basement
and found that someone had left the freezer door open. Water was
forming a puddle on the floor, and the food was starting to thaw,
including several nice steaks.
When Sylvia reported the basement flood situation to Peggy, they
decided to make the most of it. They made calls to the rest of the family
and a few friends and got to work. Peggy went out and picked up some
more side dishes, and they whipped up an impromptu feast. Soon Betsy,
her daughter Kate, and her husband, Robbie, joined them, along with