Finding Mabel

“Think of whence you came, and step across that threshold without fear, with the expectancy of finding love at your journey’s end. I’ll be there for you when it is your time to go.”

Those were her last words to me, spoken as she passed from this world all those years ago.

Now it was my turn, and her arrival confirmed what I had been unable to name.

For three days she sat in the armchair beside my hospice bed. She said nothing. She did not need to. She was simply herself, elegant and composed, a younger version of the woman I had never known, yet somehow had always known. She had come to me before, always at the edges of waking, and I understood she was here now to honour a promise.

The pain worsened as the hours slipped by. Morphine was the only thing keeping my thoughts from breaking apart. I drifted in and out of consciousness, and each time I slipped under, she was there.

Half-awake, I heard a young doctor murmur to the nurse that it would not be long now. She corrected him softly but firmly, the calm authority of experience reminding him that I was still present.

It did not matter. I knew where I was going. She had taken me there so many times before.

She was not a memory, and not a ghost, though she carried something of both. She was my guide through thresholds, revealing the hidden current beneath the world. She had taught me how to listen to it, how to shape it for the good of others. My friend. My mentor.

I slipped into a deeper sleep, and the memory of our first meeting unfolded. Had I found her, or had she found me? I never truly knew. What I did know was this: she awakened something that had always been waiting within me.

When I woke, the pain was gone.

The air felt different. The silence, too. No machines. No murmured voices. Just stillness.

I swung my legs from the bed and stood, steady and sure. My feet were young again. In the wardrobe mirror, a younger Joyce stared back at me, whole and unafraid.

“Are you ready, Joyce?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, and I meant it.

She took my hand, and together we crossed that threshold, confident in what awaited us beyond.

My name is Joyce Turner.

Let us step back in time to when it all started.

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Finding Mabel is a story uncovered through memory, myth, and the lives touched by one extraordinary woman.