No, no. Reality included none of these extraordinary events. She was as alone upon waking as she had been while falling asleep. Her queen-sized bed held only herself, curled up on the left-hand side of it, blankets wrapped around her as tightly as if she were in a very narrow sleeping bag.
The blankets, so tightly around her, felt soothing, cocoon-like. Yes, a cocoon was a good comparison. For, within a cocoon, comes transformation. A fuzzy, many-legged, marvelous creature forms a cocoon as protection when it is most vulnerable. Such protection is necessary for its survival.
She, too, had created a cocoon, built of both her own emotional defenses and of the support of loved ones. Rachel felt her cocoon had been protecting her as surely as that of a caterpillar. It had been vital to her when she, like the caterpillar, had been most vulnerable. It was shelter when she was most in need of protection while the transformational powers of growth and healing were at work upon her.
This transformation had been taking place deep within her. It had been a gradual process; painful, confusing, coming in fits and starts. Yet, Rachel was beginning to see results now. Healing was happening. Grief was beginning to loosen its strangle hold upon her. She was finding that she could breathe again.
The flow of time was pulling her along into newer and newer territory. No time travel. No magic wands. No jolly elves. Finally, she felt that none of these were required. The forces of the Universe, some power beyond herself, had guarded her, guided her, nurtured her within a cocoon of love.
Rachel knew that, like the sheltered caterpillar, she was no longer the same creature as she had been before. She would never be the same. In some ways, this loss of her former identity was the hardest adjustment of all. She grieved for this loss, surely as much as for the loss of her husband, whose head would never again lay on the pillow beside her. Crying, raging, aching, longing, falling and falling into wells of numbness, of anger, and of sadness. Then, climbing out of those wells over and over again. She had done that, would no doubt, at times, do that again.
Grief had changed her. The process of coping, the natural instinct to survive, and the hope that some relief would eventually arrive, had worked together to mold her into a new person. Rachel didn't know if she was the sort of caterpillar who would become a moth or the sort that becomes a butterfly. It didn't really matter. Knowing was less important, at this stage, than simply being. Thus, Rachel pulled herself up and out from the cocoon of blankets. Out of bed, into the world, she reemerged.
---The End ---
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