I will tell you something interesting about feelers. Their very existence and every natural part of the world they are in is essentially a miracle.
-The energy inside and outside of their bodies lending them life.
-The colors that surround them.
-Shrubs and flowers blossom one day.
-Snow falls the next.
-Their world's perfectly placed distance from me.
Miracles.
Yet when they learn something fantastic that doesn’t immediately fit into their past experiences and current expectations, they often refuse to believe it. Or, equally disappointing, they attempt to explain it away or categorize it as something it is not. Instead of opening their minds to the extraordinary, too often they close their minds and retreat to the ordinary.
Henry had witnessed the birth of his children and watched as they learned to talk, walk, read, and later drive. He had a young apricot tree in front of his home that produced copious amounts of sweet fruit every year--despite his never having tended to it--and a mature pine tree in his backyard where a magnificent owl recently began carefully constructing a nest. His teenage son healed a badly broken arm in just 4 weeks without surgery. His entire life was teaming with signs of wonder and phenomenon he couldn’t begin to explain—but consciously or subconsciously he accepted each of these.
Still, the man in the suit’s explanation was too much. Henry backed away and slumped to the floor, shaking his head repeatedly. He spent five minutes opening and closing his eyes, as if to hurl himself out of a dream and into reality. Impossible, he repeated no less than nine times as he looked from the table to his own hands and body. He walked to the nurses at the computer and attempted to speak to them, only to find they could not hear or see him. Sure enough, his own medical chart was on the computer in front of them.
Finally, he walked toward the operating room table where two surgeons and their team were tending to a seriously damaged artery and badly shorn muscle near his shoulder. A silver bowl of rocks, debris, and unsalvageable tissue lay nearby. His head was wrapped in bandages with tubes coming from his mouth. Henry felt sick at the sight of it.
He slowly returned to the well-dressed man and mumbled in incredulity.
“Why? Why is this happening?” He asked, half to the man and half to himself as he stared back at the surgery.
“I can’t answer that, Henry.”
“And why not? You can see me. Clearly you know something I don’t. Who are you? What are you? I just don’t…” He trailed off.
“Well, this may also be hard to understand, Henry.”
“Are you an angel?”
“I’m not.”
“God?”
“No.”
“Am I dead?!”
Henry struggled for some semblance of reasoning to wrap around all that he was seeing and feeling but came up empty. There was an intense pressure mounting deep within him, now concentrating itself in his forehead.
“Please just tell me who you are and what is going on!”
The man studied Henry with that same earnestness Henry had first seen in his gaze.
“Henry, you are not dead. And, while I don’t have a name in the same manner you do, most of you call me Grief.”
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