And Then I Met You: An Unbelievable True Story

By Mackenzie Lee

Have you ever wondered whether your beloved watches over you from their heavenly post? Have you often had the feeling that your loved one has remained right by your side, even after the final goodbyes? And Then I Met You is the true story of a love so enduring and eternal, it transcends the barriers of time, space, and life itself.

In these pages, you will meet two people whose love is challenged at every turn. The countless barriers that stand between them and true togetherness seem endless. And then the unthinkable happens--and all the barriers vanish in the most unexpected and miraculous of ways.

This epic love story will linger in your thoughts long after the last page, and remain as a twinkle in the sky and a smile in your heart. Who knows? You may even look at life, love, and death in a whole new light.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Mar 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9780228887713

Book preview

And Then I Met You

An Unbelievable True Story

edited by Vivien Cooper

And Then I Met You

Copyright © 2023 by Mackenzie Lee

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-8772-0 (Hardcover)

978-0-2288-8773-7 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-8771-3 (eBook)

Table of Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Afterword

One

Have you heard from Mike for your birthday? asked my friend Angie.

It was late October of 2018, a full month after my birthday. We were sitting at Willie’s Steak House at the time, having a belated celebratory dinner.

No, I haven’t…and it’s been too long. Even for him.

Mike and I always managed a phone conversation on or near our birthdays, no matter how far apart we might be, geographically speaking. He wasn’t usually able to call me on my actual birthday or his, but he always snuck in under the wire and called me sometime in my birthday month (and his).

Close enough. As long as he got the month right, that was good enough for me. After all, we were separated by many miles now, with me being up north and him down south.

Circumstances were such that I couldn’t call and had to wait for him to call me. First, July—Mike’s birthday month—came and went and I didn’t hear from him. When September—my birthday month—rolled around, and I still hadn’t heard from him, I felt a little uneasy. But I hadn’t paid any attention to the vague emptiness I felt until I heard Angie’s question.

What’s his full name? she asked, pulling out her phone and going onto Google. Oh, no, is that him?

I looked at her phone and saw the website of a funeral home. Oh, dear God. It can’t be him…but it is.

All I could think was, Oh, Mike, don’t let me down.

Don’t let me down…I’m in love for the first time, Don’t you know it’s gonna last, It’s a love that lasts forever, It’s a love that had no past… (The Beatles)

…He died peacefully at his home, read the death announcement. Mike had died on May 18th, 2018, five months earlier. Photos of him, along with words that had been written about his passing, stared back at me.

I remembered something and gasped. In mid-May, Mike had appeared to me. Now I realized it had to have been the same day that he died. I was driving at the time. I saw his face covering the entire windshield of my car. It lingered for a good five minutes.

Wow! I had said to myself. Mike must be meditating and focusing so deeply, he sent himself to me!

That was the only explanation that made sense to me at the time. The thought that he had passed was the furthest thing from my mind. I thought he was on an overseas medical mission trip.

Looking more closely at the photos with the death announcement, I noticed something—something different about him since the last time we had seen each other. He still looked very handsome and young for his age, but his left arm and face looked impaired. Being a nurse, I could easily tell that he had suffered a stroke.

I would find out later that Mike first had a stroke and then a heart attack. The stroke left him very weak, but he held on for a couple of months. The heart attack in May of 2018 ended his life. I look at it this way: he was such a strong man, the dear Lord knew that He was going to have to give him a one-two punch when it was time to take him home.

I started to crumble, tears flowing down my face. I had all my hopes pinned on Mike. I knew that he had wanted to come up north to live with me. There were countless times I had envisioned him parking the car, walking up the driveway, and knocking on my door. I had seen that in my mind so clearly, it was hard for me to believe that it was not going to happen after all.

In anticipation of one day being together again, I had vowed to become my best self again. I had set the wheels in motion, getting braces for a second time so I would have straighter eye teeth. I also went on a strict diet regimen to drop some pounds and bring back my best shape.

Returning home after Angie and I left the restaurant that night, part of me dreaded unlocking the door and going inside. I had so many memories of spending time with Mike over the years, and some of those memories were made in that very apartment.

I opened my door, closed it behind me, and reached for the light switch. As soon as I turned on the light, I saw an amorphous outline of a body come streaming through the closed door. It had followed me inside!

The spirit started wafting through the living room. Then it swirled through the kitchen, looped back around, and hung there, hovering. It changed color, from a dark charcoal to a light gray.

I stood there, thinking to myself, What the hell is this?

I tried to decide how I felt as I watched it. Strangely, I didn’t feel scared. I said to myself, If it was an evil or bad spirit, I think I would feel it. So, maybe it’s friendly.

My next thought was, Well, what am I going to do about this? How am I going to make sure it’s friendly?

I decided to be my usual take-charge self and use the direct approach. I started yelling at it. What the hell are you doing here? Identify yourself!

The spirit put an image in my head of Mike looking like he was parachuting. In the mental image, he was wearing his Knights of Malta uniform, with a cloak bearing the distinctive red cross of the Middle Ages.

The spirit seemed to be Mike, identifying himself in a way I would recognize. I had been longing for the day when we would be under the same roof, sharing our days and nights. I never would have dreamed that the next time I saw him, he would be in spirit form.

In the weeks and months after finding out that he had passed, I could hardly function. I had so many hopes and dreams for us. When they went out the window, so did all my motivation.

I curled up in a ball and cried, day and night. I wailed aloud, overwhelmed by the vastness of the grief and the endless stream of tears. I shook all over, wrapped in a blanket, staring blankly at the T.V. I was adrift in an abyss, completely unmoored. I had a huge hole in my gut.

That was the first time in my life that I had experienced the physical side of grief. The weight of it made it hard to breathe. I was grateful that I didn’t have to go to work at the time. I don’t think I could have pulled it off. It was everything I could do to get out of bed in the mornings.

I let my grief over Mike impact my health for a while. I overate and stopped taking optimal care of myself. Now, I’m trying to bring myself back to life, and get out from under all the damage I did to my body. Little by little, in baby steps, I’m fighting my way back to my best self.

Mike had been my anchor, my rock, my heart, my right hand—my everything. I didn’t know what to hold onto anymore. Whether I was physically near him or not, I had always felt a physical pull in my heart whenever I thought of him. What was going to happen to me now that my rock was gone? How was I going to talk to him?

In a rare moment when the light of clarity came shining through the clouds of grief, I said to myself, Well, maybe I could do with Mike what I did with Dad when he died…

My father had been my best friend, my source of humor and inspiration. Many years before I had met Mike, Dad said to me, Mackenzie, how come you’re not dating?

It’s simple, Dad. I’m not dating because it’s hard to find another you! They don’t make them like you anymore.

My words sounded like a compliment, like something a loving daughter would say to her father. And that is true—I loved and admired my father very much. But what I said was absolutely true. I was just being explanatory.

You’re not out there anymore, I continued. Guys like you don’t exist. And then shortly afterwards, I met Mike.

The way I felt about my dad and the way I felt about Mike were very similar. So, when Dad passed away, I was devastated. I felt lost without him. That’s when I decided to go about my life as if Dad were still alive. I would talk to him every day as if he were right there in the room with me.

With Mike hanging around my apartment so much, I decided to treat him in the same way, like he was still alive. After all, he was still with me in a very real sense and didn’t show any signs of going anywhere.

First, I needed confirmation that the spirit really was Mike. It didn’t feel evil or dark. It seemed to be him. At the same time, I wouldn’t have put it past some evil spirit to pretend to be him. I didn’t want to find out that I had been had—again.

Before I could accept Mike’s spirit fully into my life and talk to him like he was physically still there, I needed to confirm that this entity who was hanging around my house really was my beloved. I was not qualified to determine whether I was being stooged by someone playing a cruel joke on me by pretending to be someone I loved and missed.

Two

Going all the way back to my early school years, I repeatedly had the rug pulled out from under me. That feeling of being had stayed with me and affected my ability to ever fully trust anyone.

In high school, I would meet new people. When they tried to get close to me, I would invite them to come to my house on the weekend. I was happy, thinking I was making a new friend. Then I would find out that the only reason they wanted to come over was because they wanted to be around my brother Keith and his friends. It was all about the guys.

I would realize, Oh, I am being had here.

I often had the feeling of being on uncertain ground when it came to matters involving my oldest brother, Wes, as well. He would say one thing and do something else. It made it hard for me to trust him.

One incident in particular stayed with me. All of us kids attended Catholic school. For reasons I never understood, Dad always dropped my brothers off at their all-boys high school first, and then took my older sister and me to our all-girls high school. (My younger sister went to public grammar school and took the bus.)

This habit of Dad’s made me late for school every morning. I never understood why he didn’t take us girls to school first, since our school was only a mile from the house. But I knew there was no point in questioning him. Once he got his mind set on doing something a certain way, there was no changing it.

The nuns didn’t know that the reason I was late for school in the mornings was because of my father’s drop-off routine. Even if they had known, I don’t think they would have cared. As far as they were concerned, I was late, and that was inexcusable. It was as simple as that.

On those days when I showed up late—which was pretty much every day—I had to stay late and clean the chapel. That was my punishment. It was a nice little chapel that held about fifty people, and I knew it well. My chapel-cleaning chores included wiping down and polishing the pews, and dusting the windowsills.

One afternoon, I was in the chapel, cleaning away, when a friend joined me. Oh, hey, Marsha! I said. Got the same assignment, huh?

Having a friend help me clean the chapel made it seem less like a punishment. It also made me feel like getting into some mischief. Since I was responsible for polishing the plate that held the communion wafers and the chalice used for the communion wine, I happened to know where the key to the sacristy was kept.

I said, Want to open the bottle of wine? I know where the key is!

The anteroom which held the sacristy had been left ajar on that particular day, so I knew it would be easy to get the key. It was a crooked, creepy old key that looked like it had been around since the year 1850. It fit inside the golden door of the sacristy that held the holy wine, the chalice, and the palette.

I unlocked the sacristy. Then Marsha and I helped ourselves to the holy wine, drinking it straight from the bottle. (I didn’t dare drink it from the chalice. I knew I would have been struck by lightning.) It tasted terrible and didn’t do much for me, but it gave us both the giggles.

Now, I had a big problem: Marsha and I had drunk every last drop of the communion wine, and I had no way to replace it. So, I took the empty bottle home with me. I smuggled it into the house and waited until no one was around. Then, I took it to my oldest brother.

Where the hell did you get this? he asked.

I had detention today, and I had to clean the chapel. I snatched it out of the sacristy.

Seriously, Mac? You ripped off the church?

No, Wes, I didn’t rip off the church! I sat there and drank it with my friend. It was disgusting, by the way.

I enlisted his help. Would you please get me a bottle so I can replace it? If the nuns realize it’s missing and find out I drank it, I’m going to be in big trouble.

My brother made me squirm for a while, giving me the impression that he wasn’t going to come to my rescue. When he was done giving me a hard time, he said, Well, that wine is crap. I don’t even know if I can get it. And, if I can, it’s going to cost you!

How much money before you’ll do this for me?

Twenty-five bucks. he said.

Twenty-five bucks?! That was a lot of money for me as a high school kid. Luckily, I had birthday and allowance money tucked away. If I give you the money to do this for me, you have to promise not to tell Mum and Dad! You promise?

Once I had gotten my brother to swear that he would keep my secret, I gave him the money to procure the wine. He did as I asked and bought a bottle for me. The next morning, I did my best to conceal the wine in my book bag.

When Dad dropped me off at school that morning, I put my book bag over my shoulder. I did not realize that the tip of the bottle was poking out.

I scrambled into school, a bit panicked. The Holy Day of Obligation mass was that day, and I needed to get the bottle back into the chapel before the priest discovered that he had no wine for the mass. I snuck into the chapel, put the bottle in the sacristy, locked it, and put back the key.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I walked into homeroom, believing I had pulled it off, undetected.

Sister Mary said, Oh, so you’re on time today! No chapel duty for you.

I chuckled to myself, thinking, Yeah, if you only knew!

That night at the dinner table, Dad was unusually vocal, talking about all sorts of things. Out the blue, he asked all of us kids, Would you take drugs if they were around?

In unison, we all said, No way.

Then, Dad turned to the topic of drinking. Mac, how long have you been drinking at school?

I swung my head around and looked at Wes, who was blushing. Then I looked back at Dad.

I saw you toting a bottle of wine into school the other morning, he said.

My father may have seen the bottle poking out of my book bag, but there was no question in my mind that my brother had ratted me out first.

"Gee, Dad,