I accompany Sydney back to Callie’s house, and both of us walk through it in silence, looking around the place where we celebrated yesterday. The absence of the old woman is stark and brutal. We search the places where Callie might have put her will, opening drawers, thumbing through papers.
Finally, Sydney locates it in a cabinet in Callie’s bedroom. She sits on Callie’s bed and unfolds the document.
I wait inside the doorway, leaning against the dresser, giving her time and space to figure it out. After a few minutes, she blots her eyes and looks up at me.
“She left me everything. The house, the bank account, everything. Oh, and her Bible. She made a special note that I was to get her Bible. It was like she set it apart from all the other stuff, like it was the most valuable thing she had.”
I glance around the room and see it sitting on Callie’s bed table. I lift it reverently and take it to Sydney. I sit down on the bed next to her as she opens it.
“Look. She wrote in it. All these notes.”
“Now you’ll have to read it,” I say.
Tears rush to her eyes again. “Yeah, I’ll do that.” She finds a Post-it note sticking on a page at the back, and she opens the Bible there, at Revelation 21. Callie’s notes and exclamations fill the ample margins.
“Read it,” I whisper.
“It’s about heaven,” Sydney says. She starts to read, and I close my eyes and try to imagine what the words mean. Heaven is a place I never thought much about, a place I just hoped existed. I don’t understand all of what I hear, but deep in my soul I hear the promise of no more tears or death or mourning or pain. She reads of the precious stones, the gates of pearl, and the illumination that’s not set off by the sun because there’s no need of one.
By the time Sydney comes to the end, I realize I’m holding my breath. I let it out and look at the words as her finger moves under them. “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost.” She looks up at me, her eyes packed full of the same kind of things I’m thinking. I nod for her to go on. She reads more, then comes to a point that hitches my heart. “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming quickly.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.”
We’re quiet for a long moment as we stare at those words. “Look,” I say finally, pointing to Callie’s note on the side of the page.
She’s written, “I’m coming home!! Can’t wait to see it!”
Sydney covers her mouth and dissolves. “It’s like she really was excited to go.”
“If you believe what she believed, I guess it would only stand to reason that you would be excited to get there.”
We take a moment to read Callie’s small handwritten comments in the margins of the heaven chapters. I put my arm around Sydney as she thumbs through. It’s as if she’s sitting here with us, showing us things that thrill her.
“What a gift,” I say when Sydney closes the book and holds it to her heart.
“Yeah,” she says. “I think she had something there. It did need to be set apart. Grammy thought of everything.”
“I hope this gives you a little more peace,” I say. “It sure does me.”
I can see that her smile is genuine. “It does. It’s almost like Grammy was looking out for me even in death. Trying to make me feel better. Making me understand where she is.” She gets up and goes to Callie’s dresser and picks up her hairbrush. “It’s just that she was such a special lady. And now we’re going to have a funeral that’s more of a memorial service, and I doubt that many people will come. At her age, all of her friends must have died before her. What if nobody comes but the preacher?”
“I’ll be there,” I say. “And I can guarantee you there’ll be others.”
When I leave her there a little while later, I’m determined to make my promise come true. I’m going to get a crowd there for Callie. I’ll go to every person she dragged me to, everyone I know who knows her. I won’t take no for an answer.
Callie Beecher is going to draw a crowd.