The Vision

The sunlight streamed through the treetops, fingers of golden light filtering through the whisper of the swaying palm fronds and edging through the pines. And there, dancing in the ethereal glow, spun dozens of liquid silver orbs reflecting the iridescent blue of the sky, the sapphire green of the moss climbing up the hill, and the sunset fuscia of the azaleas nodding to sleep in the early- afternoon warmth.

The infinitesimally thin skins of soap and water each pirouetted a solitary dance through the river of light cascading down over the angel-topped birdbath before they found a common path upwards, towards the sun. In the soft glow, the apricot tree’s tender leaves, which exploded in a fountain of soft green behind the birdbath, appeared delicately painted with gilded edges. As I watched, the bubbles rose higher and higher, until they melted into the intensity of the sun’s fire, where they morphed into a shower of rose petals, delicate and pink as a baby’s cheek, to flutter back down to earth.

I awoke from śavāsana, the resting pose at the end of a yoga practice, in a bit of a daze. The honey-hued wooden floor beneath me breathed warmth from the sun flooding in through the window overhead. My limbs felt heavy, as if pressed down by the light. I had the deep sense that I had glimpsed something, something of great importance, but I did not understand what it was.

I told my husband about the vision that evening, but I still did not understand the significance of what I had seen. It had been so beautiful, and so otherworldly. I just could not stop returning to that scene in my mind.

The call came the next day. My beloved Grandfather had died suddenly the morning before, most likely at about the exact time that I had been entranced in my mind’s eye with the bubbles. And, it all made sense.

When I was a child, I used to spend time in the summers visiting my grandparents in Bella Vista, Arkansas. My Grandfather and I would perch up on lawn chairs on the redwood deck and blow bubbles. Their cedar-sided house, at the top of a slope, hovered at the height of the tree canopy in the forest beyond.

We would go to Walmart (back in the day when Sam Walton was a bit of a hero of the people) and buy bubble solution in pink plastic bottles. Or sometimes my grandfather would make it from soap and water in the kitchen sink. We would create elaborate bubble streams, sometimes using the larger wands that made five bubbles at a time, sometimes just using the little rings. And then we would admire them as they drifted through the sunlight, shining with shifting hues, drifting away on the breeze.

My grandparents were a beacon of love in my life. Throughout a sometimes turbulent child and young adult-hood, they were my touchstones, the ones I could always turn to, the ones who knew my heart. My parents divorced when I was eighteen, but long before that, I knew that my grandparents’ relationship was the type that I wanted when I grew up. They shared an uncommon closeness.

And so, when my grandfather transitioned from this life, it seemed completely perfect that he would communicate with me with these symbols: bubbles, sunlight, a fountain topped with an angel, and rose petals returning to the earth.

His death rocked my world, literally.

I still have uncertainties about what happens after we die. Do we have a permanent existence? Or do we meld back into the cosmic consciousness? I suppose we won’t really know for sure until we are far enough beyond this world not to think in this linear existence. But, I do know that in that moment of passage, he somehow managed to reach back to me, giving me a suspended moment of peace which still permeates my essence, to let me know that we are still connected, and that that connection matters, even beyond the physical realm.

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Photos and story ©Erika Burkhalter, all rights reserved.

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