Life Happens Next by Terry Trueman

leaving her body behind, a freedom I’ve treasured so much for so long.
    But Debi sighs and says, “I have to go, Shawn—I love you.”
    I say, “I love you, too.”
    She hesitates, pauses for just a moment, and smiles. “See you later,” she says.
    As Debi begins to disappear, fading into soft light, I feel my seizure racing to an end. I wish we could stay together longer.... I wish we could talk about our lives: What do they mean? Why are we here? Why were we born the way we are? Why …?
    Back in my body again. Rusty lies on the floor at the foot of my wheelchair. He stares up at me intently, as though he knows exactly what I’ve just been through.
    The wind outside the window moves the branches of the trees and the small leaves quiver lightly on those branches, as if they are waving to the world. I stare at the tree, a thick trunk, big and small branches, shimmering leaves. And for the first time ever, I think about its unseen roots, spreading out into the earth below—hidden and invisible, but every bit as important as all the rest of the tree.
    My gaze shifts to Rusty again. He smiles.
    I think silently to him, “I know, boy.”
    He drops his head back down and sighs. I don’t feel like sighing. I’m more alive than I’ve ever been before.

32
    T here once was a guy who, when he’d dream, could never tell if he was a man or a butterfly—I think I know what he felt like. What’s a dream and what’s real? In the end, it seems to me that we are made up of both our dreams and our waking selves. All of us dream and then wake up, only to dream and awaken again, over and over all through our lives.
    Life is always about what happens next, or at least that’s what we feel while we’re busy living it. But what happens next is always just more life; crazy, funny, sad, hopeless, hopeful, winning, losing, being known but never being fully known.
    In my bed tonight, as I lie here waiting for sleep, I think about everything, but mostly about the people who already love me. I know that they don’t know me, don’t know who I really am under my skin and inside. But nobody ever really knows anyone else. We are looks and brains, bodies and faces that we show to the world. But appearance and brains and even our bodies are only a part of us. It’s our souls and spirits that live on forever.
    I think about the ending of Dad’s poem “Shawn”:
    I hold Shawn tenderly.
    In sleep, voice quiet ,
    He breathes.
    Hands still, in silence, slumbering ,
    His spirit is a feather on a quiet river.
    His person, his being, some kind of impossible, painful ,
    Incomprehensible gift.
    Even though my dad felt this way about me when he wrote his poem, he ran away instead of finding some way for us to connect. My father could never see me. I wish I could tell him what I believe, that our souls are forever linked, that we’ll always be together, whether he knows this or not.
    Rusty saw and protected me and Debi befriended me. If Debi with all her so-called “handicaps” and “disabilities” saw me for who I am and found me inside my broken self, who’s to say that someday, someone else won’t see me too? Who’s to say that even my dad might not one day overcome his fears and find me? I’m not just my body. And I’m not anyone else’s beliefs about who I am.
    I’m Shawn McDaniel. I love and am loved. I’m alive and happy. Thanks to my dad’s poem “Shawn,” a lot of people think they know me. But I hope that someday I’ll meet someone who will know me as much as I want to be known, someone who sees that I am not just my limitations. My future doesn’t have to be what my life looks like right now. What’s next for me? What happens now? All I know for sure is that life happens next. How cool is that?

Author’s Note
    I t’s not possible to tell all that has happened in the life