Diana von Welanetz Wentworth - Send Me Someone: A True Story of Love Here and Hereafter

Send Me Someone

A True Story of Love Here and Hereafter

by

Diana von Welanetz Wentworth

SEND ME SOMEONE is a tender and empowering story of intuition, trust, emotional awareness, responsible choice, and love that I savor.

Gary Zukav , bestselling author of Seat of the Soul

I loved this book. SEND ME SOMEONE is a poignant and inspiring love story that proves the profound fact that death is not the end.

Louise L. Hay, author of You Can Heal Your Life

SEND ME SOMEONE is sure to be one of the most enduring love stories of our time. I knew Diana and her husband Paul for many years, and was there as this amazing tale unfolded. This book captures the magic and mystery of their relationship and reminds us that there is no end to the forms in which love can come to us

Barbara DeAngelis, Ph.D., author of Real Moments

SEND ME SOMEONE is a remarkable and inspiring love story, told with zest and humor, that reminds us that love is more powerful than death.

Jack Canfield, co-author of the #1 best-selling Chicken Soup for the Soul series

SEND ME SOMEONE is a magnificent love story--poignant, heartening, and uplifting... a beautiful demonstration of the Soul of love. I highly recommend it!

Susan Jeffers, Ph.D. , author of Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway

If you're ready to have your soul touched, expanded and profoundly moved--read this book. You'll want to share it with everyone you love.

Mark Victor Hansen , co-author of the #1 best-selling Chicken Soup for the Soul series

SEND ME SOMEONE. Copyright 2001 by Diana von Welanetz Wentworth. All rights reserved. No part of this e-book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, email Diana@sendmesomeone.com .

ISBN: 9781620951033

Parts of this work appeared in a slightly different version in Chicken Soup for the Soul Cookbook by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and Diana von Welanetz Wentworth, published by Health Communications, Inc. (1995)

First published in the United States by Renaissance Books (hardcover edition)

First St. Martins Griffin Edition: October 2003 (paperback edition)

You waited until you were alone.

Death is a private thing.

You knew your last act

was to a different audience.

As it entered you

oh how you must have danced!

curving toward God,

elegant and alone.

Dear one, what is it like?

Tell us! What is death?...

Elias Amidon

PART ONE:
Paul

CHAPTER 1

Paul lay on the couch, his aching legs comforted by the afghan Id made the winter we lost everything. Touching the thick stitches, I remembered howlong agowed spent months in a borrowed, snow-bound cabin at Lake Arrowhead. To pass the time Id crocheted remnants of rich woolen fabric together with soft yarn. As Id laid out the various patterns, Paul and I worried over what direction our lives could take and how we might use our talents to build a future for ourselves and our three-year-old daughter Lexi.

Wed talked about the milestones of our lives and what had brought us to such a low point. Like those remnants, could it all be combined into something new, more meaningful and more beautiful? Our answer: yes. Our conversations had helped us realize once again that crisis could offer gifts as well as challenges, and wed grown from the experience.

But this time, nearly twenty years later, there would be no opportunity to reinvent ourselves. We now had to face the possibility that Paul would not survive the cancer spreading through his body.

He looked plaintively at me. Are we just fooling ourselves, Kitten?

It was a good question. Positive thoughts or not, the radiation and chemo didnt seem to be working.

I cant stand leaving you in a mess. He worried out loud about how Id run our business alone, how Id manage all of the details he was so good at handling. Can you get a lawyer on the phone for me? I need to find out about making a will.

Within an hour wed found an attorney and dictated a simple document. The necessary signatures would be added within a few days, and now there was nothing to be done but hold each other wordlessly. When his breathing deepened, I assumed he was dozing off and rose to step silently toward the kitchen to refill his water glass. He called after me, I dont want you to be alone!

I didnt stop or even break my stride.

Then send me someone! I blurted, surprising myself.

It was an electrifying moment. Something had happened, but I didnt know what.

I will, he said. Then even more forcefully, I will!

He did.

* * * *

Lexi and I said goodbye to the last of the hundred or so friends who had come to our home following Pauls memorial service. She was pale. The stress of the last four months showed in her face, making her appear older than her twenty years. Shed been a trouper [sic] during her fathers illness, moving home from college, working with our office manager to keep our business, the Inside Edge, running as smoothly as possible. Shed been so busy taking care of her dad and me, shed had little time to deal with her own feelings.

Kneeling, I arranged photographs of Paul on a small table next to the window, the same ones wed had on view in front of the altar at the memorial service. There he was, debonair in a tuxedo as he waltzed with Lexi at her debutante ball; there he was, at the helm of a sailboat, the wind blowing in his hair, the pleasure of the moment etched in his handsome face. Among the photos was also a large sepia print of Pauls and my clasped hands, taken in the hospital only a few days before he died. Alongside the pictures, ashes inside a book-shaped bronze urn were all that remained of his physical form.

Now, with everyone gone, it was just Lexi and me. She sat on the floor next to me and we looked at each other, as though in our silence we might understand something more of all that had happened that day.

Finally, she started sobbing. You know whats hardest of all for me, Mom? My daddy wont be at my wedding someday. He wont be there to give me away.

All I could do was hold her and rock her until she was quiet again, then she dragged herself off to bed. I snuffed out the candles around the pictures and flowers wed brought from the service, then changed into my nightgown and went to bed too, waiting for peaceful sleep to overtake me. But unexpectedly I was alert, sensing Paul in the room just as clearly as I had when hed been alive. He felt so real that I felt I had to talk to him.

Why, youre here, arent you? I whispered aloud.

Yes, he answered in my mind.

A warm sense of release flooded through me.

Well always be together, you and I. It is our destiny. We were together even before we met...

Since his fateful diagnosis only four months earlier, I never anticipated I would actually feel his presence when he was gone. Id always thought wed die together somehow. I had even joked about a double coffin. But now I wondered if perhaps those thoughts foreshadowed something else: that wed simply betogether... as I deeply felt we were now.

This meant I could speak to him anytimewith my thoughtsand he could speak to me.

Am I just imagining you? I asked aloud after a moment.

I am as near to you now as Ive ever been.

Could I believe any of this? Was my mind just playing tricks? Even if these were mind-tricks, I found them comforting. Melting into him as I always had, I fell asleep as if enfolded in his arms.

The following morning, I awoke feeling remarkably content. Was this denial? I