Free Healing Hands (The Queen of the Night series Book 2) by Laura Emmons Page A

shall never die.
    I looked at the casket with my mother lying in it. She looked at peace, so beautiful, but her eyes were closed. When I’d first walked into the nave and saw the open casket I’d instinctively turned on my healer vision. It had been irrational hope. Mom had no aura. She had gone. Only her body remained.
    Reverend Pruitt said, “The Lord be with you.”
    The congregation replied, “And with thy spirit.”
    The minister continued. “Let us pray.” 
    We bowed our heads.
    “O God,” he intoned, “whose mercies cannot be numbered. Accept our prayers on behalf of thy servant Shannon, and grant her entrance into the land of light and joy…”
    I let the words wash over me. My mind filled with a myriad of memories of better times, laughing and crying, teasing and yelling. A badly spliced home video ran through my head. Every once in a while a phrase from the service penetrated my brain.
    “They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more…”  I remembered Mom telling me about Dad being killed in action.
    “…and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.”
    I remembered the last family picnic we’d had with Mom and Dad before he’d shipped off to war. How much they’d loved each other.
    Rose was standing at the pulpit now. I barely processed what she said. “…He that heareth my word, and believeth in him, hath everlasting life…”
    I hoped she and Dad were together and happy now.
    Fiona stood on the pulpit. Her voice rang strong and clear. “…I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die…”
    Tears started to drift down my cheeks as I remembered: Mom dancing in the sand, barefoot on the beach, running away from the waves because the water was cold. We carried on after Dad left, and eventually we found the ability to enjoy life again.
    The minister spoke, “In peace let us pray to the Lord…”
    I let the tears fall unchecked. I remembered when Mom and I fought because I didn’t want to go to Cacapon for the summer. It seemed so stupid now.
    “Grant to all who mourn a sure confidence in thy fatherly care, that, casting all their grief on thee, they may know the consolation of thy love.”
    The congregation responded, “Amen.”
    I remembered the day my father came home carrying a shriveled, red face in a blue blanket to meet me. I remembered how tired but happy Mom looked and how ugly Corey looked, how his tiny hands clutched into fists.
    “Grant us grace to entrust Shannon to thy never-failing love; receive her into the arms of thy mercy…” and finally, “forever and ever.”
    We all said, “Amen.” 
    ***
    Someone led me out of the church to a waiting car. It took us to the cemetery at the end of a town so small I saw the whole place with one sweep of my gaze. The town of Great Cacapon and the cemetery sat near the nexus of the Cacapon River and the mighty Potomac. Ancient trees dotted the area between grave stones. Most of them were evergreens, and I thought it appropriate.
    The sedan parked and I was escorted to a newly dug grave. My mother’s coffin, now closed, was removed from the hearse and slid onto a wheeled scaffold. A few men pushed it over to the grave site and placed it over the hole. A fabric skirt covered the mechanism holding up the coffin and hiding the hole. Good, I thought. I didn’t want to see the grave any more than Corey. A pile of fresh earth sat at one end of her coffin.
    A member of the choir had joined us graveside and sang a mournful, Celtic ballad of loss.
    Reverend Pruitt took his place and spoke, “Give rest, O Christ, to thy servant Shannon with thy saints, where sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing but life everlasting.”
    My memories fast forwarded to the morning after Halloween, when my mother’s aura was riddled with tumors. The tears started falling