An Angel in Training

By John Paul Carinci

Craig Garnell is a successful thirty-five-year-old CPA and father of two daughters who is shocked to his core when his wife of ten years serves him with divorce papers. As his life suddenly turns from happy to a horrifying nightmare, Craig seeks advice from his attorney, only to be killed when he becomes lost in his thoughts as he leaves his office and walks
straight into the path of a cab.

Met in the hereafter by his chubby English spirit guide, Oliver Lloyd Stephenson, who passed away in 1833, Craig learns he is still alive and is trapped in the afterlife while his comatose, possibly paralyzed body lies in a hospital bed on Earth. While pondering his existence, Craig is gifted with the privilege to travel back in time and study great men, speak with God, and even request miracles. As he embarks on an introspective journey to hopefully find the answers to all his questions, Craig makes a shocking discovery that changes everything.

An Angel in Training is the tale of a young man’s journey to the truth after he becomes trapped in the afterlife and accepts an invitation by his spirit guide to study great thinkers and
speak to God himself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: May 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781665720854

John Paul Carinci

John Paul Carinci is an insurance executive and president of Carinci Insurance Agency, Inc. He is also a songwriter, poet, motivational speaker, and CEO of Better Off Dead Productions, Inc., a movie production company. Carinci is the author of multiple novels and self-help guides as well as several screenplays.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

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The extreme light and city traffic noise suddenly exploded into a black and tranquil utopia. It happened in a split second. No reaction, no time, no vocal sound on my part. Just emptiness. I was dying. I knew it, and strangely, it didn’t seem to matter, not at that second.

All I remember was walking, and reading, and contemplating my life. I didn’t see the yellow cab that suddenly hit me, sending me straight up and crashing to the unforgiving pavement below.

So, this is what death is: nothingness, silence, extreme deafness. Is this what it is like to be blind and deaf? Is this how it all ends? Life expectancy is in the eighties, and one thinks it will be forever till they reach death, but not at thirty-five. Craig Garnell, your life is over at 35, I thought.

How one hour in a lifetime can mean so much. I was in the prestigious offices of Stanley Amling of Amling and Curry on Park Avenue, New York City. It was nine in the morning. I was meeting with a longtime friend and trusted attorney, Stanley Amling. My wife filed for divorce after ten years of marriage. I was blindsided.

After a decade of being married and blessed with two beautiful, healthy daughters, Jennifer and Victoria, it hit me hard. I had no idea there was a problem. Maybe I was too wrapped up in my career. As a CPA, I moved up the ladder over the years, joined a large accounting firm, and gained many well-to-do clients.

We lived in a loft in Central Park West. We were doing well financially. Then the D bomb exploded. My life suddenly turned from happy to the worst nightmare of a lifetime.

How could she, I thought? What was she looking for, anyway? Romance cannot be the same after ten years as it was while dating. Marriage, I thought, always was supposed to strengthen, grow, mature, like a fine wine. Can marriage still be that earth-shattering, exciting, after a decade? Maybe I had it all wrong. Perhaps I am not a romantic at heart.

Give a man a good meal, a fine wine, competitive sports, loving children, and a loving female companion, and he is very content. I was there. I was content, secure, positive, and happy about where I was in life.

I was healthy, worked out regularly, took care of myself, making sure all my levels were good. But what good was it? I tried to be positive for my two daughters. The motivation to be vigilant about one’s health comes from the pressure of staying here, at least until your children are grown. Who knew it could end so abruptly? In an instant, it was over.

So, what was the motivation of Crystal feeling she had to file for divorce? Who was this Doctor Timmons, her gynecologist, that she was leaving me for? I realized they dated in high school, but everyone dates someone in high school. That is not a reason to break a family apart.

Stanley Amling, my attorney, had presented Crystal’s divorce papers to me and reviewed the next steps. My heart raced, I felt my blood pressure shoot up, and I was dizzy. Stanley asked me to return in a week, and we would devise a defensive game plan to try to preserve some of my assets from being entirely lost to my wife.

The mind sometimes wanders all on its own, even when you need to concentrate on your current surroundings. That is why I unknowingly walked in front of oncoming traffic. I was in another place in my mind.

My daughters were my world. The miracle of having a child that I helped bring into this world is pure magic that can’t be explained. The heart knows the responsibility and seriousness of raising a child. We were blessed with two beautiful and loving daughters. We couldn’t ask for more than that. Some couples are unable to have any children.

So, we had it all—a huge loft overlooking Central Park, New York City’s most beautiful park. We had the best private schools for our daughters that money could buy. We took elaborate vacations to foreign countries every year, and money was never an object for anything.

What more was Crystal looking for? I thought, just as the yellow cab hit me. Crystal was the only woman I loved so intensely in my life. There were several women I had dated over the years, but Crystal was the one. But is there uneven love in marriages? Does one partner love and adore the other much more? And does one partner realize they are adored more than they adore the other? Maybe married couples would never admit that the uneven love percentages actually exist, but I always felt my wife was the queen of the entire world, and I adored her with all of my heart. Evidently, it didn’t matter.

Blackness and silence were overwhelming, but amazingly, my thoughts continued. Was this what happens at death? Is eternity nothing more than thoughts, darkness, silence? Do we have it all wrong as earthlings? No angels, no St. Peter, no pearly gates of Heaven, and no God? And where were the aliens we hear so much about? And all the planets in the universe. Where were they? Surely, I thought, aliens with weird-shape-heads should be greeting me, showing me all the advanced technology they have that we so desperately are trying to duplicate on earth.

What’s it all about, Alfie? Where are the answers to the world’s most mysterious hidden secrets? What a letdown. Were we all misled for many thousands of years? What about Adam? What about Eve and the forbidden apple? Is this all some elaborate hoax that is believed to be reality from the beginning of time?

The thoughts continued at a feverish pace. Maybe after death, thoughts become more powerful? Maybe those thoughts grow to a point where we slowly receive all the answers? But like an active volcano, they must get more intense and suddenly erupt. It was all happening so fast that there was no yearning to go back quickly. There was, at that second, no missing anyone in particular. There was only an intense need for more information, only the need for answers to everything I’d ever questioned.

Didn’t I deserve answers? After all, wasn’t there some sort of reward for dying? We were always taught to follow the rules: be kind, love everyone, and not sin. The rules of God must be followed. So, we try to live the life we believe we must. Sometimes out of fear, sometimes out of moral habit. But we all expect some sort of reward of some kind. Even as children, we were rewarded. We were especially good and well-behaved for some kind of reward, even if it was special love from our parents instead of material things.

I waited for a sign. I waited for some kind of sound, or light, or colors of some sort. Does time move faster or slower after we pass on? Perhaps, a year on earth had already passed, in what seemed like minutes in the hereafter? After all, eternity is forever, is it not?

Suddenly, there was a blinding light. No sounds of any kind, but through the intense light, I could see no one. It was as if I were looking directly into the sun, but with no forms taking place. Was this too some unique sign? Perhaps this too was procedure, routine? Maybe the way it is supposed to be after death?

CHAPTER TWO

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Silence and blinding light were all I sensed. There was no pain. In fact, there was no pain even at the time of impact. The split second of the moving cab was frozen in time, like a snapshot. I even had the vision of a male driver, foreign-looking, dark-skinned but not black. Not any distinct nationality I could have placed.

Too fast to react. Too quick to scream, regret, or anything else. Life deals a hand to many people like that.

A friend was in the passenger seat with his wife driving on the highway. Their children were in the backseat.

A large piece of metal which was on the roadway was suddenly was kicked up by a truck speeding ahead of them. Suddenly, the metal careened through the passenger side windshield and nearly decapitated my friend. He died within days from his injuries. The man, husband, and father had no medical conditions before that freakish split-second, life-changing event. I went to the wake, unable to understand the meaning of life and never able to find a purpose for many things that happened afterward, too.

Was this purgatory I was stuck in? Does eternity for some people like me comprise blinding light and silence, so one can contemplate every second lived on earth? If there was nothing else but this, I would analyze every nano-second of my thirty-five-year existence.

But where do I begin? I led a life very similar to many. Not a bad person, by my own standards. But not a very loving person to others. Oh, sure, I loved my family as strongly as any human could. My children and wife had all the comforts this life could provide. They were my world.

Am I bad? Am I any different from most other humans? I guess not. But that doesn’t make it right. So, maybe, purgatory was my new home. The funny thing is; there are no re-negotiating actions of a lifetime after one dies. No begging for a second chance. No passing Go on the Monopoly board of the afterlife when reviewing one’s entire life.

What it is, it is. And what was done shall always remain memory resident. It will stay in the journal of whoever holds all the records and scorecards of life.

Suddenly, the totally deafening silence slowly developed into a slight humming sound. What the heck is going on? I asked inside my thought pattern, to no one in particular. Was this routine, where we slowly are allowed to experience what awaits us after we pass?

Perhaps we may experience the hereafter only in minimal baby steps at first. Maybe it would be overwhelming if given to us all at once? The humming grew ever so slightly louder. So, we had blinding light and humming. I patiently waited for what would come next. I was not nervous. Rather, I looked forward to each and every turn and bump in what must be an incredibly enlightening experience.

The humming strangely was slowly transitioning into what appeared to be, at first, violin music. Songs I had never heard before but immediately fell in love with.

The violin is a unique, relaxing instrument, though I had never taken to it while I was alive. But now, I welcomed the haunting tune that was slowly growing in volume. Wow, I thought, This is some elaborate regimen dead people must go through. So, I waited and hoped that the extra special door to the entranceway to Heaven was at the next bend.

Then, just as quickly as the violins played louder, the blinding lights reduced way down to a manageable level, though I could still not see any forms whatsoever. I could begin hearing whispers of indistinguishable voices.

I couldn’t tell if they were voices of women, men, or children, though I tried very hard to make out anything I could. I felt it was all a clue of some sort: the light, the violins, the whispers. Perhaps I was supposed to think a certain way about these complicated clues? It wasn’t working, at least not for me.

I was never very good at riddles and certain games, especially the famed Escape Room. I would be a decomposed skeleton if the workers for the Escape Room games didn’t provide many clues and finally opened the door and let me out.

So, I waited, like a small child who was told to stand in the corner as punishment for something he did wrong. At ease now, I realized that eternity was forever.

In fact, I had nowhere to go anymore. For the first time, I had no pressure whatsoever. No meetings to attend, no lunch break to start so I could rush back to the office, no children to collect from school, nothing. It was tranquility, this after-death limbo. I could accept this world, I thought, as long as it didn’t progress in any way to a visit permanent or even temporary to hell.

Finally, the violin music softened up some, while the lights started to strobe slightly like that of a disco dancehall. There were now colors associated with the lights. But now, the whispers were a little louder. I felt like an imbecile as I tried, without success, to decipher anything. The voice kept repeating over again the same thing, a sentence.

I waited as the volume increased ever so slightly. I made out what sounded like, Clear wet. It sounded like a question. So, I responded, at least in thought, because that was all I could do—think thoughts.

In fact, I had no pain sensations any longer. My back no longer hurt as it always did from lower back pain. It was a strange feeling for the first time, not to have any routine human sensations. I merely existed as a spirit entity. It was weird at first, but I was adjusting.

Trying to be as pleasant as possible in this new world, I asked, Excuse me, please help me. Can someone let me know what I am supposed to do? I am from New York, and sometimes we can be abrupt in our attitude. Or at least be perceived as being impatient. The last thing I was trying to do on my road to an entrance into Heaven was to piss anyone off.

I heard the voice a little clearer. Are you clear yet? the man’s voice asked.

Excuse me; I can’t understand what you are asking, sir.

Can you hear me now? the voice asked.

For a quick second, I got a funny thought. Maybe it was the guy in the Verizon cellphone commercial walking around, asking everyone, Can you hear me now?

I quickly snapped out of my comedy mode of thinking and said, I think I can hear you.

Are you clear yet?

Clear? I asked in response to a heavy, distinctly English accent.

Is it clearer now?

Oh, clearer? Yes, clearer now, I said, feeling like an idiot.