First Light

   Have you ever marvelled at and wondered why, on a cold night in winter in a high meadow, a lost lamb will shiver and bleat forlornly for its mother - and from somewhere deep in the darkness of the valley, she will hear him although he is much too far away to be heard. Somehow she knows he is somewhere out there and she will walk all night, stumbling on the rocky hillside, to reach him.
   Then just as the first rays of sun spark the dawn, she will crest the mountain and in the first light she will find herself in a flock of a hundred strangers, but now she can hear his cries and she will pick him out of the crowd in minutes. 
    The mystical bond between ewe and lamb, a lioness and her cub, and a mother and child. The bond is as strong in the most domesticated of creatures as it is in the wildest. And it is infallible.

   I know this because five days after Drew, my youngest son died, from somewhere high above the layers of devastation that engulfed me, I heard his cries. 
   "Where are you, Drew?'' I whispered through the pain. He was somewhere - out there - how , dear God, how will I reach him... Panic threatened. I could feel its insipient encroachment crowding the edges of my mind  ...  feel its icy fingers reaching for my wits, clawing at the tiny residue of courage I had left.
   And then. A shaft of light ignited my world, ethereal and real and in its blue white center I saw my son.     
  That bond had reached from the valley of my devastation across the great divide of death.
                                                                         
                                                                         *****
  
  Not long afterwards, and as one event lead to another, I began to write. At first I journalled the mind rattling visions, words, and signs that Drew was alive. His soul had survived death. And that journal soon became a book I've called "Show Me Heaven, Drew."  And he has.

    I'll tell you more tomorrow.