Where do people go?

For years and years with my mothers strict Christian beliefs I was taught to believe in a heaven and hell, the good or the bad, once its over its done. To be honest that thought always truly scared the hell out of me. When my friends began passing away it scared me even more. How can you think that people just cease to be? That the one short period of time spent on this earth was all the time you get with them? Souls go to heaven or hell, never elsewhere.

The same year Steve died, about the same time I was spending nights sleeping with the light on, I found out I was pregnant with my second son. It took me over 5 years to think it through, to realize the timeline and order of events. By September of that year I knew I was pregnant. And I decided from the second I knew that were the child a boy, he would be named Steven. In honor of my old friend and new angel.

I remember one of the saddest moments of the entire year following Steves death was around March just two months before the anniversary of his death. I ran into his mom at the library. I had been meaning to call her, you know how time slips away...... And here she was, so sweet as always. I spotted her and walked up to her immediately. I asked her then if I could honor my child, whom I knew to be a boy by then, by having her permission to name him after Steve. She looked at me so hopefully, and asked me if it was Steves child. I think what pieces of my heart were being held together by thin strings broke a little bit more at that moment. God I wished it had been. I was big and pregnant by then and had she thought it over a second she would have realized that any child of Steves would have been born before then. But she was a mother still in pain, grasping at things like the rest of us were. She of course said she would be very happy if I named my little one after her son, her baby.

My friends were all watching, its like they knew, oh man, I seriously think we ALL knew something weird, miraculous, out of the ordinary was happening. By this time I had told Cathy and Susan about the image/spirit I was seeing in my room. Neither of them doubted that it was quite possible, and that if anyone had the willpower to be there for a friend, alive or in death, it was Steve. I went into pre term labor on April 22nd. I stayed dialated 3 centimeters... forever it seemed. This is like labor that is good and under way. And I knew, well before I even went into Pre term, that the babys due date was, according to the last 3 sonograms, May 16th. April 22nd to May 16th? At 3 centimeters? That didnt only seem impossible, it seemed way beyond fathomable to be in that kind of pain, mentally and physically over the whole ordeal.