An Alternate Plane of Reality

In the Great Divorce C.S. Lewis conjectures that what we sense is reality might actually be a dim mirror of a realer reality. That’s right. If we think this is all we have: the here and now—think again. Behind this world is another where the sky is bluer, the grass greener. I know this comes across as sentimental “over the rainbow” and there is no way to prove there is a parallel universe.

There is no bridge that connects us.

My husband likes to tell me that my version of how something came off is simply my narrative, my overview. His postmodern opinion is that there is no objective one truth. Versions of what we think happened are as varied as the number of people who contribute their side of things.

I believe my mother has crossed over. She’s fully engaged somewhere else other than here. Where she is mixing up biscuits, making cole slaw, cleaning out cupboards, searching for her rain cap. Harold is with her—and at the same time so also is her mother. Her sister Gwen doesn’t have polio and her sister Mary is not quite as fat as she actually was.

In this alternative plane of reality Mom can exist in many dimensions. She can live in Upper Sandusky, her hometown, Columbus, where she attended Ohio state, and Dayton and Centerville where she and Dad raised us kids—all these places together and all at once.

Time has no second hand.

Place has no boundaries.

Our revels have now ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

Are melted into air, into thin air;

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capped temples, the great globe itself,

Yes, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with sleep.

--from The Tempest