Proof of Angels

by Mary Curran Hackett

  But I was growing resentful and mad. I didn’t understand how or why he was so ready to give up, so ready to accept that the cards had been dealt and this was his fate.

  I called my mother.

  I remember it like no other memory from that time—as fixed and real—because I know that up until I made that call, I was on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

  It was in the middle of the day on Saturday and Greg was having an especially horrible time. I didn’t want the kids to see him like this, and if I had to be honest, I also didn’t want to see him like this. There is a reason, I thought, that some wise person made couples vow to sustain their love and marriage even in sickness and health. You don’t know your partner, you don’t know love, you don’t know commitment until the person you love is so ill and so far gone that they are completely unlovable. Unable to face him, unable to face cancer and all that it might take from us, I packed our kids into our car and headed to the movie theater. (I swear we watched every animated movie we could during the months of March, April, and May of 2011.) I didn’t make it a mile from my house before I felt the wave of anxiety, fear, exhaustion, and sadness overwhelm me. I knew at any moment I was going to cry, scream, or crack in two. I pulled into a gas station, stepped out of the car and started to fill it up with gas, and dialed my parents’ home number.

  “Mom, I need you.”

  I felt it completely. I wanted my mom. I was a thirty-five-year-old wife and mother of two and I wanted my mommy. I wanted someone to tell me I wasn’t alone. I wanted someone to tell me I could handle this. I wanted someone to tell me this would all work out, that in a few years it would be nothing more than a memory. I needed her to remind me of my wedding vows—in sickness and in health. I needed her to tell me what I knew already—that I needed to stick by my husband, that I needed to give him hope, even if he didn’t have any. Even if I, a skeptical cynic, didn’t think he had much reason to hope.

  I can’t remember any specific words she said. All I remember is my hands holding the gas pump, clutching it for dear life. As if that nozzle filling up my tank was the only thing holding me to the earth. I remember crying, I can’t do this all alone. Help me. I remember hearing her voice, and feeling, no matter what the words, that I wasn’t alone. I do recall, vaguely, her reassurances that I was doing the right thing by taking the kids out of the house, taking care of myself. I remember her telling me she loved me. It felt as if the arms of an angel wrapped around me and calmed me instantly. Just minutes before, I was so desperate, so alone, and then suddenly, because of her, I knew I had the strength to carry on.

  There would be many more days like that. Eventually Brigid’s neoplasm disappeared as mysteriously as it had arrived and Greg’s cancer was completely removed and he had only to go in for checkups every six months now. (It will always be, for me, one of those mysterious miracles. If Brigid had not gotten ill, we would never have noticed Greg’s arm, would never have pushed to have the cancer taken out. Brigid, in the end, was fine, and so was Greg.) In the meantime, my book hit the bookshelves and as happy as I was to celebrate my lifelong dream come true, I have to admit it was something of a letdown. (Don’t get me wrong, I know how incredibly blessed and lucky I was and am, and I know ten years earlier I would have given a limb if it meant I would be published.) But in my, admittedly, CRAZY mind, I felt like I was an epic failure. I had imagined the moment of my debut as something so much more than it was. There was no starred Kirkus review. (I had some lovely reviews, I will admit that.) I had no Debut Author feature story in O, The Oprah Magazine. No review in the New York Times. No worldwide book tour, film rights, foreign rights packages. Oprah didn’t call me personally to tell me how awesome I am. Go figure. It sold decently, but it was, for me, not enough. It didn’t soar on the New York Times bestseller list. I know all of these are just the fantasies of every budding writer. These are things every naive writer thinks are going to happen once they get that elusive pub deal. Instead, the reality of publishing was surprisingly less dazzling. And I felt like a fool publicizing it on blogs and my Facebook fan pages. In a world that measures success by how many Twitter followers or Facebook fans you have and how much money you’ve earned, I was coming up slightly smaller than a centimeter. I was nothing. A nobody. My book a pretty dust collector on my shelf. I lived my entire adult life struggling to fit writing into my two kids/two jobs life, and I was looking for a break, something, anything, to make my—no, my family’s—life easier and I had failed them. In fact, I had made their lives harder. When I should have been taking care of my husband and daughter and devoting all my time to them, I was working and writing and editing. And for what? I thought. Nothing special. Some bloggers and Amazon reviewers said nasty things, and I felt like calling them and personally chewing them out. Do they have any idea how hard I worked? Do they have any idea how much of my heart, soul, and life I put in that work? I have to admit it was crushing. Soul crushing. The entire year leading up to the publication of Proof of Heaven and the months following were rough. There is no way to pussyfoot around that fact. We were overwhelmed with medical bills and debt. And then I was laid off. Perfect. Just perfect. Now I had no income. Then to add salt to the wound, another book with the same name, Proof of Heaven, by Dr. Alexander was soaring on the bestseller charts. Granted, his was a true account of his near-death experience, but I still couldn’t help but feel slighted. By whom? What? I had no idea. I know the universe owes me nothing. I know that, but still, every time I got an e-mail or Facebook comment from someone telling me they loved my book, only to realize they were talking about the other Proof of Heaven, I very well wanted to scream: I wrote my book first! I am not Dr. Eben Alexander! Can’t you read a book cover?

  But every single time I was about to lose it, crack, come undone, call it whatever you want, something miraculous would happen. Over and over and over again, it happened. An e-mail would appear in my in-box. I would open it and it would be from someone who happened to have read my book—usually by mistake. The writer of said e-mail would explain how they were looking for Dr. Eben Alexander’s book and brought home mine by accident. Nevertheless, they stuck to it and discovered that they didn’t hate it. (Thanks!) In fact, many wrote to me to tell me how my book had affected them, changed them, and in some ways comforted them after the loss of a loved one. I was touched. Overwhelmed. But, more than that, I took these notes as some sort of sign of encouragement that I needed to keep writing. Despite however badly I thought I had failed or let myself or my family down, I needed to keep writing. It happened more times than I could count. I would be frustrated and lonely and feeling like a complete loser, and someone would stop me in my kids’ school parking lot and tell me they’d read my book. It was like they were angels, messengers who knew how to reach out and touch me at the exact moment I needed them most. Many of these angels had a singular message in common: all of them wrote to tell me that they had lost someone close to them, usually a child, and in a couple of instances more than one child, and many faced unspeakably difficult challenges along the way, and all of them had a deep and profound sense that they were not alone. They felt compelled to tell me that, like the characters in my book, they felt that someone was with them every day, watching over them, and that there was hope that they would see their loved one again. Some admitted that they had their doubts, but more often than not, readers felt strongly that those who had gone before them were watching over them and loving them. They had all the proof of heaven and angels that they needed.

  And so I started writing Proof of Angels—a very different book from the one you now have in your hands. For months I was having visions of a woman, Birdie, who came to me in dreams—she was the first thing I thought of when I woke up in the morning and the last person I saw before I fell asleep. I felt like I was having long conversations with an old friend. And I realized something—I not only understood Birdie, I just might be a bit like her. I knew what it was like to have a vision of what your life would be like and then for r
easons beyond your control, things just didn’t work out the way you’d hoped. So you got a little bitter. A little hard. Not just hard on yourself but hard on others for no reason other than that life was hard on you. I knew what it was like to be a single mom, a hard worker, and have this calling to create and make things beautiful—make art. I also got my character Claire, who was completely unprepared and torn by her modern life—juggling a career, her children, and her husband—and feeling completely overwhelmed by the crushing daily responsibilities.

  I thought I’d written my best work. I was so proud. So full of myself. So certain. This is it. This is the book. Three months after pushing Send, to my editor, I received a call from my agent. The news was grim. The book was unreadable. Not good. Nothing like they had hoped or expected. One reader stopped reading just a couple of chapters in. I tried to remain calm. I took the criticism for what it was: criticism. Meant to make me better. Meant to push me further. I had two options: throw in the towel and give up on writing, or write a new book. Instinct told me to do the former, but I knew not to give in to that self-destructive urge. I knew I needed to keep at writing. Fortunately for me, my kids and Greg were at my parents’ house for the week. I could cry at night without having my kids hear me. I could process all the range of emotions I felt. I felt like a giant failure. A huge loser. I had created characters that had become like family to me and others didn’t like them. It’s nothing personal, but it is totally personal. It was personal to me. But it was also an opportunity. A second chance. My editor was giving me a second chance. Not many people get them. She owed me nothing. And yet she believed in me and I didn’t want to let her down. I didn’t want to let my family down. Myself down.

  My mind circled back that week to all the people I had talked to over the past three years since publication, all of the stories of angels people had shared with me and all the requests to find out more about the characters who lived and breathed inside Proof of Heaven. To Lucia, my editor, it seemed simple, really: tell what happened to all of them, through Sean. After a couple of false starts, I pitched the idea of the entirely new book you have now to my agent and editor. I wanted a book about second chances—about failure and forgiveness, about doubt and faith, and about all the angels who touch us along the way, the ones who might just bump into us long enough to nudge us on our way and the ones who stay in our lives forever and guide us indefatigably toward the light. It took me a long time, and a lot of wasted energy, to see what was so clear and simple right in front of me: write a sequel. I couldn’t have done it without Marly and Lucia. I couldn’t have seen through the darkness without their light. And what seemed difficult was in fact simple after all.

  We’re not alone. Angels are among us. They are right here, every day, all around us, guiding us, guarding us, and lighting the way. I guess you could say this cynic, like doubting Tom and bullheaded Sean, who had to find out everything the hard way, finally believes in angels.

  Reading Group Discussion Questions

  JUST AS PROOF OF HEAVEN was a story about a big question, “Where do we go when we die?” Proof of Angels continues in that thread and asks another thought-provoking question: Why are we here and what is our purpose? Each character in Proof of Angels, especially Sean, struggles with that fundamental question, as well as several others: If he was spared, why him? Why not others? What does that mean for his life?

  1.Proof of Angels opens with several epigraphs: which one resonated with you? Why? How do you think these quotes relate to the book?

  2.Each character has a different approach to life—Sean, James, Libby, Tom, Chiara, and even Chief have certain ideas about why they are here and what their purpose is. Whose approach do you most relate to? Does anyone’s belief upset you? Why?

  3.Do you see yourself or any of your loved ones in these characters? If yes, who? And why?

  4.Do you think Sean really saw an angel? Or do you think he was hallucinating and got lucky in finding his way out of the fire?

  5.Do you believe in angels?

  6.There are two types of angels discussed in this book: the type that is the mysterious “being” that supposedly points Sean to safety, and then all the angels in his life who challenge him, push him, support him, and give him insights, or rather, illuminate the truth of his life. Which type of angel are you more apt to believe in?

  7.Have you experienced a miraculous or unexplained event? Have you ever felt the presence of an angel or a messenger? When? What happened? Could you rationally explain it, as Gaspar tried to get Sean to do? Or did you feel strongly that it was truly a miraculous intervention?

  8.Have you had transformational moments when you saw the light? When you were saved? Or when a friendship or relationship made all the difference in your life?

  9.Sean tells Tom at one point that everything in life happens for a reason. Tom doesn’t feel this way. Do you feel more like Tom or Sean? Do think that there is a purpose for everything, even if it is beyond our own understanding? Does every life have a special purpose or mission?

  10.Both Sean and Libby must overcome their demons. They are, for the most part, their own worst enemies. Do you think people who are “repeat offenders” at the game of life deserve a second chance? Would you forgive Libby or Sean for what they did to their loved ones?

  11.Why do you think Chiara is so quick to forgive Sean? Do you think it’s possible for time to heal wounds and to just grow up and move on? Do you think that she took pity on his injuries? If he wasn’t injured, do you think she would have been so kind?

  12.Chiara tells Sean: “It’s dangerous to think you know what is best for someone else. To make a decision for two people without the other’s consent. To decide another’s life for them.” Do you agree? Has this ever happened to you?

  13.Sean forms a few new friendships in this book; which one particularly resonated with you? Why?

  14.In the end do you think Sean found proof of angels? Where? When? How?

  15.What’s your proof? Or do you even feel like you need it?

  Read on

  * * *

  Have You Read?

  More from Mary Curran Hackett

  PROOF OF HEAVEN

  * * *

  A mother’s faith, a child’s courage, a doctor’s dedication—a moving and thought-provoking tale of hope, love, and family.

  He might be young, but Colm already recognizes the truth: that he’s sick and not getting better. His mother, Cathleen, fiercely believes her faith will protect her ailing son, but Colm is not so sure. With a wisdom far beyond his years, Colm has to come to terms with his probable fate, but he does have one special wish. He wants to meet his father, who abandoned his beloved mother before Colm was born.

  But the quest to find the dying boy’s missing parent soon becomes a powerful journey of emotional discovery—a test of belief and an anxious search for proof of heaven.

  A magnificent debut novel, Mary Curran Hackett’s Proof of Heaven is a beautiful and unforgettable exploration of the power of love and the monumental questions of life, death, and the afterlife.

  Click here to buy Proof of Heaven.

  About the Author

  Author photograph © by Laura Winslow Photography

  MARY CURRAN HACKETT is the mother of two children, Brigid Claire and Colm Francis, and is married to Greg Hackett. She received an MA in English Literature from the University of Nebraska and a BA from the University Honors Program at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. Born and raised in Danbury, Connecticut, she now lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with her kids, her husband, and her stacks of books.

  www.marycurranhackett.com

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  Praise for the Work of Mary Curran Hackett

  “Proof of Heaven belongs on any keeper shelf. It’s beautifully written, mesmerizing and tragic, thought-provoking, and a reaffirmation of faith. The story of a mother’s love for her son was touching . . . but it was the tale of one boy’s search for
heaven that brought me to tears. I loved this book.”

  —Shelley Shepard Gray

  “Proof of Heaven is a remarkable first novel that explores the intersections of science and religion, medicine, and faith. . . . Reminiscent of Carol Cassella’s recent work, this is an emotionally fulfilling, spiritually inviting, thought-provoking novel.”

  —Booklist

  “Does heaven exist? Are our loved ones waiting to reunite with us? Can near-death experiences offer proof? In Hackett’s debut novel, everything hinges on an intriguing young boy, Colm, whose rare medical condition repeatedly causes him to die and return to life. Indeed, Colm physically manifests the dilemma each character in this novel faces: How can brain and heart, reason and faith, speak to each other?”

  —Kirkus Reviews on Proof of Heaven

  “Colm’s journey will move and charm readers who are also searching for answers to their own questions of faith. Hackett’s lovely debut is a good choice for Melody Carlson devotees.”

  —Library Journal on Proof of Heaven

  “A stirring and remarkable, life-affirming debut. . . . Kudos to Hackett for presenting a real world, gritty yet soaring tale in which humans must make personal choices between hope and hopelessness. . . . And rest assured that once you’ve finished . . . you may well look at life and its inevitable conclusion in a new way.”

  —New York Journal of Books on Proof of Heaven