The Invisible Bridge

By Nancy Millikin Tubbs

What happens if the love of your life runs off to Heaven one morning without you? After 35 years of marriage? With only a squeeze of the hand to say goodbye?
You spend the weeks and months that follow simply trying to comprehend the magnitude of your loss. Your life is completely changed and you have to find your direction again. If you’re as blessed as I am, you have a wonderful support structure in family and friends to help you get through.
Within the first few weeks, I knew that it was imperative for me to find out where my husband was and what it was like there. I had been raised in the church and had known about Heaven all of my life, but it had been a vague “floating on a cloud way off somewhere” type of idea. Now I had to know.
My husband’s death sent me on a quest for enlightenment.
Although a few of the sections of this book were actually written in the months just before his death, this book actually starts two days after my husband’s funeral. I hope that it will be a help to others. A friend who recently lost her son remarked to me, “there aren’t that many books out there on grieving.”
She’s right, there aren’t. Here’s mine. It begins on a sad note, but it gets lighter and brighter as it goes along. I hope that reading it helps others in the same way that writing it helped me.
This is a book about life, death, grief, joy, Heaven, angels and love. It’s a book about my husband. But ultimately, it’s a book about God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nancy Millikin Tubbs
• Release date: Sep 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301357901

Nancy Millikin Tubbs

Nancy Millikin Tubbs is the author of several books, including "Fresh and Crispy: Journal of an Italian Walking Tour," a humorous look at her first trip abroad; "The Invisible Bridge," a book written following the death of her husband; "Unconditional Grace," a book of prayers; "Hummingbird Inn," an historical romance and mystery novel; "The Key of Nostradamus," about, you guessed it, the key of Nostradamus; and "Rustic Breads and Spreads," a cookbook. She lives in Mississippi with her mother, helps out when she can with the local Humane Society, and spends her days gardening, cooking and reading. When she can get away with it.

Book preview

What happens if the love of your life runs off to Heaven one morning without you? After 35 years of marriage? With only a squeeze of the hand to say goodbye?

You spend the weeks and months that follow simply trying to comprehend the magnitude of your loss. Your life is completely changed and you have to find your direction again. If you’re as blessed as I am, you have a wonderful support structure in family and friends to help you get through.

Within the first few weeks, I knew that it was imperative for me to find out where my husband was and what it was like there. I had been raised in the church and had known about Heaven all of my life, but it had been a vague floating on a cloud way off somewhere type of idea. Now I had to know.

My husband’s death sent me on a quest for enlightenment.

Although a few of the sections of this book were actually written in the months just before his death, this book actually starts two days after my husband’s funeral. I hope that it will be a help to others. A friend who recently lost her son remarked to me, there aren’t that many books out there on grieving.

She’s right, there aren’t. Here’s mine. It begins on a sad note, but it gets lighter and brighter as it goes along. I hope that reading it helps others in the same way that writing it helped me.

This is a book about life, death, grief, joy, Heaven, angels and love. It’s a book about my husband. But ultimately, it’s a book about God.

The Invisible Bridge

By Nancy Millikin Tubbs

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 by Nancy Millikin Tubbs

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All scripture notations are taken from the King James Version (KJV) of the Holy Bible.

Photo below and wedding photo on last page taken by Ann Dees, used with permission. All other photographs taken by Nancy Millikin Tubbs.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my husband, Ira Otis Tubbs (Odie), with all of my love forever and always, and to my family and friends, without whom I would long ago have floundered hopelessly, and to God, without Whom I wouldn’t have made it at all.

And to Squirt, the wonder dog, who is with Odie.

Other books by Nancy Millikin Tubbs

Hummingbird Inn

Unconditional Grace

Rustic Breads and Spreads

The Key of Nostradamus

Fresh and Crispy: Journal of an Italian Walking Tour

Prologue

When my husband suddenly died very recently, two days after his funeral, I began to write to him, and to God. Within two weeks of his funeral, I began to research everything I could find on Heaven and God and angels and near-death experiences and any related topic, just to get by, just to get me through, just to understand what was happening in my life and why it was happening. It was then that I began to become more and more aware of the absolute, unconditional Love that is God, the brilliance of His Light, and the total bliss that is Heaven. I had to know now where my husband was, if he was really okay, and what he was experiencing. And then, I had to try to discover if there was a way for me to bridge the chasm between myself and my husband, myself and Heaven, myself and God.

One of my sisters had once suggested that I write a book describing how to make a leap of faith, and had even suggested a title, The Invisible Bridge. Faith is a vitally important bridge that links us to Heaven and to God, but as I have recently discovered, it isn’t the only one. Even more amazing is the invisible bridge of love.

Many years ago, I had discovered the Bridge of Faith. I had written material for the original book, material concerning faith and psychic phenomena and science and spiritual matters and God, material that seems very light hearted to me now when I reread it through the fog of my grief. But because much of it was written within weeks before Odie’s death, and because it all seemed to connect somehow, that material is included here as well.

My love for my husband, and his love for me, is the invisible bridge that exists for us between this world and the next. This book is about my realization that the Bridge of Love is there, and the different roads I traveled to find it, and my efforts to find my way across it in the here and now. The book The Invisible Bridge was no longer a book simply about making a leap of faith, although that subject is not by any means simple. This book was now about finding enlightenment. It was no longer just about talking to God, it was about finding God. Face to face.

It starts where most such journeys start, when I was thrust suddenly through a gateway called grief that I was in no way expecting to be pushed through. It began two days after the funeral as I began to write letters to my husband and letters and prayers to God, and most of it remains in that format. Much of it has been written through the flood of my tears. It is the way I found my way. I hope, at least in some small way, that it helps you as well.

Chapter One

Empty Houses

10-25-11

Therefore I will look unto the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me...when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me. Micah 7:7-8 (KJV)

I never dreamed you’d leave me. How could you? After thirty-five years of marriage, how on earth could you do this to me?

Do other widows talk to empty houses?

I think they must. I know it couldn’t just be me.

It occurred to me today, two days after your funeral, as I was still running around taking care of bills, that you no longer had to worry about bills.

Or illness. Or blindness.

This is what I, and everyone else, had been saying for days. But this afternoon, suddenly, the truth of it hit me.

I realize you are currently deliriously happy. You would not come back if you could, not even for me. You’re with God.

And you’re with your dog.

But there I was anyway, standing in that empty house, the sound of my own voice echoing back to me as I talked to you, talked to God, cried my eyes out.

Why did you leave me? We were supposed to grow old together. We were going to buy a house in the country, remember? And I’d have my chickens and cows and a tractor for gardening? And there would be lots of room for a dog to run. At the beginning of this year, I had a husband, a fifteen-year-old half cocker spaniel, half Boston terrier dog, and a happy, easy going, contented life. Now it’s all gone.

I wandered from room to room, staring blankly at the walls, wondering why you weren’t there, wishing you would just please, please show up.

"I know that you don’t have to worry about bills, illness, blindness. I know that you are with God, and that you are happy where you are, and that you really would not come back.

And I will be all right. And I will continue to pray for you every night.

By this time, I had returned to the living room and was sitting in your recliner, wanting to find some way to be close to you, to make some kind of a connection with your spirit, however fragile that connection might seem.

God, look after my husband, keep him safe and well.

I wish I could see you. I wish more than