THE THREE LIVES OF CHRISTINA THE ASTONISHING (#3)

As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words
A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World

How I was granted my wish to die but came back unexpectedly and created havoc
So I grew sick in my body not, as many people did, from the various malaises born of breathing the polluted air of the Great Miasma, but because of my deep longing to flee this world of sorrows for that other place where I hoped to find my own purpose and the meaning of all things. The woods and the animals comforted me, but they were no substitute for the world of Light and Love that Giver inhabits.
After I had been sick in my bed for some weeks, Giver heard my prayer and let me go. But transitioning to the other dimension was a lot more painful than I’d expected. Quite simply, it hurt. My dying was a hideous, protracted birthing. I was ready to stop just to avoid the hurting, but once the process had started there was no turning back.
After ten days of torment, my soul tore itself loose from my body and was gone. My sisters displayed my corpse on our big eating table in a bed of Spanish moss and orange poppy blossoms so that people from the area could file in to see me. The voices of these people were the first thing I heard once I was back in my body, and the noise made my eyes fly open. I was just as horrified to find my neighbors looking at me as they were to find me looking at them. To the sound of their screams, I flew straight up in the air until my body hit the wooden beams of the ceiling with a loud thump.
When I awkwardly turned myself over to look down at those assembled, they screamed again. Everyone but my sisters ran out the door.
After she recovered herself, Matilda tried to coax me down with a steaming bowl of the rabbit stew she’d cooked for the wake.  “You must be hungry, Christina.” But the truth was, Matilda was not a very good cook and the smell of the undercooked meat made me turn my head away.
“Please come down, I miss you so much,” Jocelyn pleaded. My gentle younger sister cherished me even though Matilda had always been her lord and master.
“I won’t come down. I’ve been to the world of Light and Love. Giver sent me back and I don’t really want to be here.”
“But you are here,” Matilda said. Aggravation tilted her voice up. “So you’d best come down, hadn’t you?”
(to be continued tomorrow)