A Friend and I Made an Agreement to Contact Each Other From the Afterlife. She Died. And She Just Contacted Me.
Or did she?
For the audio version of this article, read by the author, go here.
I don’t believe in God, and I’m very skeptical that there’s any kind of afterlife.
I used to debate these issues with my friend Laura who I met in college when we were both teenagers.
“Something had to create the universe!” she’d argue.
“Okay, so who created God?” I’d push back. “Don’t you see? Saying ‘God’ created the universe doesn’t answer the question — it just pushes it back a bit.”
“You really think that when we die, we just cease to exist?”
“I have no memory from before I was born,” I’d respond. “Why should there be anything after I die?”
In the end, Laura and I came up with an idea how to settle the argument: whoever died first would try to contact the survivor from the afterlife — like the arrangement the great escape artist Harry Houdini made with his wife, Bess.
Now that I’m older — and less of a jerk — I’ve become more humble on the question of God and the afterlife. I mean, come on: no one knows anything for sure.
Plus, now I can see that one really strong argument in favor of these concepts is the comfort they provide the living.
And God knows, we can all use more of that — including me.
Last November, at the age of 59, Laura died.
Harry Houdini died before Bess, but she claimed he never did contact her.
Before Laura died, when she was in hospice, I said, “This is probably completely inappropriate, but you haven’t forgotten our agreement, have you?”
She smiled and said she hadn’t.
I no longer judge other people’s beliefs in God and the afterlife, but I’m still personally very skeptical about both. I’ve been open to hearing from Laura, and I’ve been trying hard to be receptive.
But I’ve also been expecting to be as disappointed as Bess Houdini.
Then two weeks ago, Michael left for the day, and I went for a walk on the beach below our condo on Puget Sound. It was cold and overcast, and I was the only one there.
I was thinking about Laura, and before I knew it, I started talking to her.
For forty-five minutes, I poured my heart out, telling her that I missed her and how fondly I looked back on the many years we lived together. I was also brutally honest with her, talking about things I’d never told anyone — confessing the ways she’d disappointed me and the ways I suspected I’d disappointed her.
At one point, I laughed and said, “Since you’re dead, you know all this already, right?”
Laura mostly just listened, but when I asked her to share what she now knew about the mysteries of the universe, she said, “I can’t tell you. And would you believe me even if I could?”
It was true. This was all happening in my head, right? I was having a conversation with myself.
But it was still incredibly emotional.
In the end, Laura said she had to go and that she wouldn’t be coming back again. So I said goodbye to her for good — a second time.
Afterward, I felt better than I had in months, like something off-kilter had been put back in place. The world suddenly made sense again.
At this point, I was heading back to the condo, but I stopped and looked back the way I’d come.
There were two sets of footprints side by side in the sand: my own footprints coming and going.
But they looked more like the footprints of two friends taking a walk together.
It was only at this point that I remembered Laura’s and my agreement — that whoever died first would try to contact the other from the afterlife.
Later, I mentioned the encounter to this therapist I've been seeing, and also the agreement Laura and I made all those years ago. I told her how powerful the experience was — talking to Laura, but also afterward, seeing those two sets of footprints in the sand.
“Do you think it was really Laura?” she asked me.
I thought about it for a long time. Then I said, “I honestly don’t think it matters. What matters is what I felt, which was as real as it gets. And what I still feel.”
My therapist smiled. “I think it was really her.” She’s a lot more woo-woo than I am.
So did Laura contact me from the afterlife?
In the end, I really don’t think it matters.
Then again, I’m never going to forget those two sets of footprints in the sand.
Brent Hartinger is a screenwriter and author. Check out my new newsletter about my books and movies at www.BrentHartinger.com. And order my latest book below.
What a lovely story, Brent. I'm an atheist but I always light a candle in every damn Catholic church I enter (I spend a lot of time in Italy) on behalf of a dear friend who passed a while ago at the age of 49. It's my moment to remember what a wonderful friend and person she was and to thank her for having been in my life. Thank you for sharing.
So many stores to share! Here's a short one: a few days ago, after an out-loud monologue to my soul-sister (who passed a few years back), I look up and see an entire hillside covered with back-lit poppies. I know some will say it's simply coincidence, but that feeling - your footprints in the sand - well, it doesn't really need more of an explanation, right?