Rebekah and the Angel of Death
by Kate Everson
Copyright 2011 Kate Everson
Death did not come easy to Rebekah. She fought it with her dying breath.
“No,” she gasped, as the life poured out of her. “No, not yet. I’m not ready… ”
But Death came anyway, not caring whether Rebekah felt ready or not. Her time was up. It was in the cards. It wasn’t like she actually had a choice.
The last time Rebekah looked up, she saw a star bursting in the cosmos. It dripped red and purple. She felt the colour go into her head and stop it from spinning. She was dead now, and all she could know was black.
Or so she thought.
It was a different world, being dead. She couldn’t feel her body, but somehow she was still there.
If not in her body, then what?
Who was she now? She wasn’t Rebekah any more, obviously. The Rebekah she knew had a body and a mind. This creature she had now become had no boundaries. She was limitless.
“I am alive, yet not alive,” she felt. “I am not in this world, yet I can still be me. Who am I? Where am I?”
She was, in fact, floating above her own body for quite a few minutes, watching people come and go and deal with the corpse, some crying, some looking stunned. Her family was there, of course, weeping the most. But Rebekah did not feel their pain. She watched as if she were just an observer, watching a movie that didn’t really concern her. Of course, she had been that girl lying there dead, but not now.
After a while, Rebekah started drifting away from her body. She didn’t really need it now, so why hang around? She kept getting lighter and lighter, and the wind took her so high she was beyond the clouds in a space where there was only Light.
The Light was surreal. It wasn’t sunshine. It was like nothing she had ever seen before.
“Light,” Rebekah thought. “So this is what it’s all about.”
She remembered being on Earth and how she had always enjoyed the sunlight and the moonlight and the starlight and the rainbows made from light. She had loved to see the light in the forest, piercing through shadows. And the way spiderwebs shone with misty light after a rain. Light had been all around her, and now that’s all there was.
First, Rebekah met some angels. Or something. She wasn’t sure what they were, because they didn’t have wings like she had expected. They just sat there and looked at her, smiling. She felt the smile more than saw it. It was like a smile that penetrated her whole being, or whatever she was, and kept on going. A smile with no end.
Suddenly, Rebekah felt happy. This was good. It was all good. There was no sadness here, like she had felt sometimes on Earth. There was no conflict. Everything was peaceful. She liked that. She wished she had more time on Earth, because there were so many things she had left to do. But… it wasn’t her call.
“I am here in some place, some space that is absolutely beautiful,” she felt, more than spoke. “I know nothing. Yet that’s enough.”
She had fallen from the cliff just that morning and they had found her mangled body lying on the rocks below, the waves washing over and over her. A strange way to die, she thought. Especially, since she didn’t like heights. But she had gone looking for a friend, and turns out, he was already home. C’est la vie. That’s life.
And now, that’s death.
Rebekah floated higher and higher into even more mystical realms. She passed many chambers of Light, where angels and cherubs held meetings on golden chairs, and she passed one Egyptian Queen still discussing history with her King.
“I always wondered about her,” Rebekah said, nodding to them as she passed by. They just ignored her. Maybe they couldn’t even see her. Was she invisible to them too?
Rebekah felt visible, but she could not see her own body. She was just so used to being visible that it was hard to switch over to being just like air, just energy, no form, nothing.
It was like being a bird without wings, just floating in a perfect sky. It was all Rebekah had ever dreamed of.
She was a soul bird. That’s all that was left of her. But that was everything. No form to worry about, no mind to worry! Just existence, bare and simple.
“Maybe I should change my name, now that I’m not Rebekah any more,” she thought. But she realized it didn’t really matter here. Nothing mattered like it had on earth. So Rebekah soared even higher. She swept past forms and formlessness, into the void and through the Light which kept getting brighter and brighter.
Finally, she came Home.
Here it was. The final destination. God was there but He could not be seen. She felt that His Essence pervaded everything without taking any shape. Rebekah felt herself as a drop of Light, a part of that amazing Being, all consciousness, all Light.
“I am,” she said out loud in her new world. “I AM.”
And indeed she was. Rebekah was, and is, and always will be. Light.
“And so is this the end?” she wondered.
“NOT YET!” came a booming Voice from Somewhere. “You have more to do, Rebekah. Go back. Finish what you started.”
In an instant Rebekah found herself on a railway track in a wooded area. She felt the rails beneath her head as she lay there. It felt uncomfortable, so she moved.
“Uncomfortable?” she questioned. “I am now form? Can I feel?”
She moved her head from side to side. Ouch! Yes, that did hurt. She quickly got up and stood in her new body. Rebekah was not the same as she was. She was no longer a girl but an old lady. She saw her veined hands and gasped. She felt her face and knew there were wrinkles. She looked down and saw her sagging body, fatter, looser than ever before. She was old.
Rebekah began to sob. She had lost so much of life. She was old now and had not really lived.
But a whippoorwill on a tree started calling her. Whippoorwill, whippoorwill, whippoorwill. She looked up and saw the bird staring at her. Right next to it was an owl. The owl turned its head right around and stared at the whippoorwill. The poor whippoorwill flew off, overpowered.
The owl flew down beside Rebekah and spoke to her. “Get up,” it hooted. “Get up, Rebekah. Get up and face this day. You have been given another chance at life to help someone who needs your knowledge right now. Use it.”
Rebekah got up and started walking down the track, very slowly. She felt weak and old. But she had enough strength to keep on walking. And enough sense to do what she was told. After all, nothing was her call any more, right?
She walked into town and found her old house. Her parents were dead now, since 60 years had passed. The house was still there, but leaning a bit, its shingles falling off and the wood beginning to rot. The grass was being mowed by the new owner, an elderly man who lived there with his cat.
Rebekah went up to the house and watched until someone came out. The man jumped when he saw her, like he had seen a ghost. But he did not know her and Rebekah didn’t have a clue who he was. She just smiled and nodded, not knowing what else to do. Then she finally got up enough courage to ask the man if she could please come in and have a drink of water as she was very thirsty and she had come a long way. He looked surprised, but let her in. Rebekah sat down in the kitchen and drank a long, cold drink. The man was shocked at how much she drank.
“I haven’t had any water for a very long time,” she explained. And she drank some more.
The cat came over and rubbed against her leg, but the man told it to go away. It jumped up on a table and watching her nervously. It couldn’t take its eyes off her.
“Come here, little kitty,” smiled Rebekah. “Come over here, sweetie.”
The cat just stared at her, its eyes glowing yellow.
Cats seemed to know
things, more than people did. They sensed it. This cat knew there was something about Rebekah that wasn’t quite right.
Rebekah got up and said it was time to go. She thanked the man for his hospitality and walked slowly out of the house. Now where to?
She was beginning to feel hungry, now that she was back in a body. But where could she get something to eat? She had no money. She was lucky to have the clothes on her back.
So she walked to the nearest homeless shelter and sat down with a bunch of strangers, taking the lunch offered her. She bent her head down low and sipped the soup gratefully. When she bit into the sandwich, she realized she didn’t have her own teeth. They kept slipping around.
“Oh my gosh!” she thought. “I have false teeth!”
Now Rebekah was shocked. She had never been old before, and everything was new to her. She was weak, her joints ached and she had false teeth. Why on earth was she back here in this dreadful old body? What could they possibly be thinking?
Rebekah had an old body, but still a young mind. She remembered a lot about her former life. She wandered the streets of her home town and saw the changes 60 years had made. All her friends, or most of them, had left.
She watched as a little girl ran around the park as her grandmother watched from a bench. The girl was as cute as a button. But there was something