Yeah, I know… the headline is clickbait… and I suckered you in to reading a whole lot more… You can scroll down to the red part if you just want the proof of afterlife story.. it’s there, BUT if you want the rest of it…

Ah, dammit, Shawn…  Just looking at that picture right now fills me we love and the desire to shake the beejeezus out of you.  Could you have prevented your death?  Heck, I don’t know… but a heart attack at 42 MAY have been enough to suggest that maybe you should stop smoking unfiltered cigarettes…  But really, with a death by heart attack at 44 were you long for this world, whatever you did?  I’m not really so sure.

The thing is that it sucks for the rest of us.

You see… people want to SAY that everyone who passed away was special… I mean really TRULY special. Mmmmmm… not so much.  In this past year, I have lost two EXTRAORDINARY young men.  I lost one of my husband’s best friends, and best man from our wedding, Scott Muennink: a man for whom more than 20k was raised on a go fund me account in a matter of 48 hours, a man for whom the church was so packed for his funeral that extra rooms had to be opened.  Scott was 41 and had an aortic aneurysm.

Here I am… six months later… and this time, Shawn is mine…

And by “mine” I mean he belongs to everyone whom he ever met.  I met Shawn at 19… and he was larger than life and so full OF life it was almost unimaginable.  Shawn was never your ordinary guy… EVERYTHING was a production…  He was over the top in every possible way.  Going shopping with him involved his putting on a costume and going in character from store to store.  You couldn’t watch a movie with him because he had to rewind it 27 times and repeat all of the lines.  A trivial pursuit game with him took about four hours because he had to walk around and tell you EVERYTHING about the question without answering it… and it generally included songs and impressions.

Shawn would come stay at my house for weeks… unannounced… and make himself completely and totally at home…  And it wasn’t just MY house where he did this.  My friends all say the same thing.  He was smart, funny, beautiful… vagabond.. renegade… You name it… that was him.. and all true and real…

I had a routine with him… Every time we’d call one and other we’d start the conversation with “Why are you always bothering me??   Every time the phone rings… it’s always you!”  And we’d say this even if we hadn’t spoken for a month… then I’d tell him the WORST puns possible because he hated everything about them and loved everything about me. EVERYONE had their routine with him… whether it was their own special language, a flurry of insults…  he made everyone feel like the most important person.

He was the guy who would go visit MY PARENTS even when I wasn’t at home.  I mean what teenager does that?  He was so sad when my parents moved from Houston to Austin that he insisted on going over and saying goodbye to the house.  (My parents completely returned the affection, by the way, they drove hours out of their way just a few weeks ago to go see him in Arkansas.  I’m so glad that they did…)

I could go on for HOURS about Shawn… We went to Costa Rica together, to Vegas… I was in the hospital to see his son, Aiden, days after he was born.  I was there when he proposed to his partner on her 40th birthday. He came to see me when I was in the hospital for a week, spent the night before my wedding in my room with me.  He was MINE.  He was ALL of ours… His town literally put their flags at half mast for his death… My whole group of ragtag misfit friends has our own personal story of Shawn.  And he’s gone…

Sort of…

And here’s where the supernatural begins (Part One:  See Part Two Further Down if you Only Want the BIG ONE).

On the morning of December 7, that’s right, a day that will live in infamy, because Shawn is dramatic like that…  Heather called me on my way to work… and, through tears, said the simple,. crushing, two word sentence, “Shawn died.” 

It took me a few minutes to cry… for the tears to come… but they did.

I walked into the building and asked a friend to take my duty that morning… and I walked into the office to see if I could get a sub because “one of my best friends died.”

They tried… but they couldn’t.

So I explained to my students… and I taught.

Sometime in the middle of 3rd period my phone turned on… out of nowhere…  I was in the front of the room, but my Pandora station came on…  Lionel Richie was singing.  As I made my way across the room to turn it off, I looked and saw it was the Barry Manilow station.  (Yeah, whatever… I love Barry Manilow).  I didn’t think anything of it at that second.. but it started to settle in.  Barry Manilow?  Really?  The same Barry Manilow that Shawn and I sang LOUDLY in his mother’s car playing “Daybreak” from an 8 track as we drove from Baylor to Temple when we were 19?  The same Barry Manilow who Shawn flew in from Little Rock to see with me and my parents at the rodeo in Houston when we were in our 30s?  That Barry Manilow?  Shawn was in my room… and I knew it.

You see…  Shawn was VERY into music.  It was the centerpiece of his life.  He would sit for HOURS and play song after song…  Stevie Wonder, Prince, Justin Timberlake, Beastie Boys…  It didn’t matter… He wanted to SHARE them with you.  He showed me his original Prince albums and his middle school fan letters to Olivia Newton John .  He LOVED music… and he connected with people through that…

…now I LOVE this little story… but it ain’t nuthin.’

The big one happened Friday night, December 9.

My misfit group of friends had been communicating back and forth with each other on our private Facebook page.  You see, there’s a group of about 15 of us who have gone camping together every year in January for the past 23 years … But we’re more than that.  It goes much deeper.  We’re the island of misfit toys.  We have been beside one and other through thick and thin… and we are teachers and cake decorators and boat dispatchers and barge managers and doctors and college graduates and high school dropouts… We are SUCH a range…  and Shawn was our light.  Shawn was the center.  Shawn was what bonded us all together… and we are SO much closer than friends.  We are SO much more than family.  We are soulmates… All of us… in one mismatched bunch….soulmates… And we love each other and fight with each other and are annoyed by each other… but it is AMAZING… and our light was GONE.

So Susan said “Facebook is good… but we need to be together…”

And so we were…  we were all together at Susan’s house on Friday night.

And we brought Keystone Light because that’s what Shawn drank.  And we got Brother’s Pizzas because that’s what Shawn ate.  (That’s actually another story….  but EVERYTHING with Shawn is a story… this would go on for days if I told them all).  And we carried a picture of him around as we did all the things we did with Shawn.

We had him with us  as we drank our ritual “bucket.”  And he was part of our night…

And Heather told us he had been cremated that day… and that there would be another memorial for him in Arkansas on Sunday.

Then we sat outside around a firepit that he had made when he stayed with the Wares for one of those random weeks… and we set his picture up in a chair in the circle with us.

Susan tried to put on some music… and then IT HAPPENED.  (Yes, this is the big “it.”  No more teaser… This is how you know…)

Susan was trying to get “Big Dog” from Beaumont/Port Arthur on “I Heart Radio” because that’s the station we always listen to when we’re camping…  only it wouldn’t come in…  Her phone kept spinning saying “searching” and it was just playing clips of random songs… One after another.  So Susan tried to turn the volume down on her Bose speaker.. but no matter how many times she tried to turn it down… it got louder.  ESPECIALLY when Shawn’s lifelong friend, Alex, called to be part of the party.  Then, Susan pressed mute… and the volume stayed loud.

I’m not sure what those original song snippets were…  I remember Mark and Kajsa singing with one of them.  I wish I remembered now, but everything below happened without another random snippet:

And “Play that Funky Music White Boy” came on.  We all laughed and said, “Now that’s a Shawn song…” and it played until the line “Play that funky music ’til you die…  ”  Then it stopped.  I don’t think we gave it that much thought… Yet…

Next, “Dust in the Wind.”  I felt the tears fill my eyes as I listened to the lyrics of the song and realized how poignant it was at that moment.

(Let me interrupt this narrative BRIEFLY by saying that there were several of sitting around that circle who have experienced a communication after death…  so I don’t know if our willingness to accept has anything to do with it… BUT…)

The songs didn’t finish… they played for random amounts of time… I then heard Heather saying “Really?  This song?”  and I realized it was Guns and Roses doing “Knocking on Heaven’s Door.”

Some of us were starting to believe Shawn was with us at this point… You see, not only were the songs playing for random lengths of time, but also Susan’s phone was STILL spinning with “searching”  and there were no commercials… no DJs… just music…  So Katie says, “Wow he sure knows how to go out with a bang.”  And then… Bon Jovi “Blaze of Glory” comes on just seconds later.

Susan says, “If Prince plays, I’m going to lose it.”

There is barely a break before the opening notes of “Purple Rain” play… and, at that point, we ALL break…Every one of us is sitting and crying.

As the song is ending, Susan puts the phone and the speaker in front of the picture of Shawn and all of us join for a giant group hug.  As we are returning to our seats, before the end of the song, it switches again… “Fat Bottomed Girls” by Queen… and we all start to laugh.

I walk up the stairs to go grab a drink… and the song stops and is interrupted by “Another One Bites the Dust.”  I turn and look at the picture of Shawn and say “That’s morbid.”  The song stops… and goes BACK to “Fat Bottomed Girls.”

We sit there through other other songs… Motley Crue, Zac Brown Band. Freebird…  and each one seemed to have a connection to a person in the circle.  Mark Kean says,  “You didn’t play Ozzy Osbourne” and goes inside the house…  Before he returns, the sound of Black Sabbath and Ozzy’s voice singing “War Pigs” begins…  There have still been no commercials.  There have still been no DJs. No one has touched the phone…

Mark says that if Van Halen were to play that he’d burn his Rush CD’s.  (Several in our group mess with Mark about his undying love for Rush).  A few moments later the song “Rapper’s Delight” begins.  You see, on our camping trips Mark would often regale us with the fact that he had memorized most of the song… and rap along with it.  This time, just a clip was played…  and then … it turned off…  just seconds later I heard the unmistakable squeal of a guitar and “Eruption” was blasting from the speakers.  “That’s VAN HALEN!”  I yelled…

Mark IMMEDIATELY went back to his car…  returned with CD’s in his hand and looked to the sky.  “A deal’s a deal, buddy…” he said.. and threw his Rush CD’s in the fire…

I looked at my husband, Richard, the skeptics’ skeptic… and I said, “You’re seeing this, right”  He said, “Yes.”   I said “You know he’s here.”  He just shrugged at me.  I said “The SIMPLEST explanation is the right one, you know.”  He said “I don’t believe in this.”  I said, “Okay… that’s fine…. Explain what you’re seeing.”  He said, “I can’t.”

The phone starts up again…Bob Marley “Three Little Birds.”  You know… “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright…”  Mark Ware has a relationship with this song… but again…  the LYRICS.  Heather says , “Okay…  Shawn…  I want Led Zeppelin….”  Again, the songs go at a random length… sometimes with gaps between… sometimes not…  The whole time Susan’s phone is spinning… searching….

A song starts I have never heard before…

Chris smiles and says, “Oh yeah… this is a good one…”

I ask “Who is it?”

Heather says “Led Zeppelin… it’s called ‘Thank You.'”

So I listen….