The Story of Willy Jones’s Afterlife
Owen Jones
Annwn is the ancient word for the Welsh Heaven — like Valhalla is to the Scandinavians. ‘A Night In Annwn’ refers to Willy Jones’ NDE (Near-Death Experience) when he is reunited with his dead wife, Sarah. It changes his life and that of everyone around him.
ISBN: 9781068353840
THE FIRST DAY BACK
“Whoohoo, Sarah! I haven’t been on a horse since I was a kid, when Dad used to take me riding on Sunday afternoons after dinner! I’d forgotten how much fun it is. Which way is home, love?”
“All roads lead to home, Willy! It’s so nice to see you enjoying yourself, my dear!” replied his wife laughing, her auburn hair flying back in the slipstream as they galloped along on their magnificent black steeds.
“So, over that way, is it?” he asked pointing forward to a spot between two mountains.
“Yes, sure…”
“I thought I recognised it. I’ve always had a good sense of direction… I’ve lived in these hills all my life… Same as you, my love, eh?”
“Race you!” she laughed non-committally, and urged her mount on. Willy laughed out loud as he hadn’t for several decades and gave chase to the horse that had a slight lead on him.
“Tally Ho!” he shouted as he clenched his horse between his knees and rocked forward. “Tally Ho!” In seconds, he had caught up and he leaned over to shout to his wife, “I don’t believe in hunting just for the sake of it, as you know, Sarah, but I wish that those hounds were with us now… The Hounds of Annwn, you called them, didn’t you?”
“Yes, my dear, but they are with us. Look behind us”. As he stretched around to look, he became aware of seven huge Irish wolf hounds lolloping along just yards behind them. “Wow!” he shouted, “I can’t believe I didn’t notice them before. This is fantastic! So exhilarating! I feel twenty years younger”.
“And you look it too, Willy”.
A while later, as they were entering the valley between the two mountains, Willy, leaned over again. “OK, Sarah! Let’s call it a draw! We can’t be far from home now, but I’m having such a great time that I don’t want to go back just yet. Can we stop here and lie on the grass? We can have a chat and play with the dogs while the horses rest a while”.
“Sure, we can. Pick a spot”.
Willy pulled his mount up within yards, saying, “This’ll do right here. The grass looks soft and green, and the view is spectacular”. They both dismounted and the dogs swarmed around them. “I didn’t realise how tiring riding is until we stopped. My back is starting to ache too…”
“Don’t think about it, Willy. You’ll be all right in a minute. Come and sit here beside me”.
“Don’t we have to tether the horses to something?”
“Not really, but we can, if you like… To a sapling? There’s one behind you”. Willy turned slowly, his hand on the small of his back.
“s’ Funny! I didn’t notice that when we rode up”.
“Didn’t you, dear? Don’t worry about it”.
Willy tied the reins loosely to the six-foot Rowan, and sat next to his wife. “That’s better… much better. I haven’t enjoyed myself so much in years. It’s great to be with you so much again. I have missed you, you know, since you passed away, or whatever you call it here. I forget now”.
“I know, my dear, I know, but I never did leave you, you know. Not really. I was always there”.
“But I couldn’t see you or touch you”.
“Granted, you couldn’t touch me, but you could see me sometimes, couldn’t you? And you did talk to me… quite often”.
“Yes, I suppose I did, but you didn’t reply”.
“I like to think that you knew what I was saying”.
“Yes, I think I did know, looking back on it”.
“Yes, I’m sure you did. How is your back now?”
“My? Oh, yes, my back”, he said rubbing it. “It’s fine. No pain at all. It’s just as if I had imagined it”. Sarah smiled at him and continued to pet one of the hounds that was nuzzling into her arm.
“They really love you, don’t they, those dogs?”
“Yes, and I really love them as well. I can’t imagine why people called them the Hounds of Annwn, or Hell, in some cases. They wouldn’t hurt a fly”.
“Well, they are hunters, and they have to eat, so I suppose they have to do some er… I was going to say ‘killing’, but I suppose everything here is dead already, so… what do they eat? Talking about food, I’m getting rather peckish myself. I don’t suppose you brought any of those sandwiches from my funeral, did you?”
Sarah was looking at him with a quizzical smile as she watched Willy trying to rationalise the situation he found himself in. “If you’re hungry, my dear, you will find some sandwiches in my bag”. Never liking to look in a lady’s bag, even with permission, he put his hand inside and pulled out a large paper bag that felt right. “That’s the one”, she said. Willy took a few out and offered one to his wife.
“No, thank you, my dear, I rarely eat these days. You could say that I’ve got out of the habit”.
Willy took a bite as she was talking, chewed and stared at her. “We don’t need to eat any more, do we?”
“We can, if we want to, but it is not necessarily, no. Some people never realise that though and still eat like they did when they had a body to sustain”.
“So, the dogs don’t…” Sarah was shaking her head slowly and grinning, “either, so they don’t hunt or kill anything…” He looked at the horses, “but the horses are eating the grass!”
“Only because you expect them to…”
“And my back? The same?”
Sarah nodded, smiling as if at a child who had just solved a logical problem. “And look at this”, she said retrieving a mirror from her bag without looking.
“I really do look twenty years younger!” he exclaimed brushing his dark hair back with his hands. “And my hair has started growing again!”
“You said that you felt twenty years younger…”
“and so I look it…”
“Yes”.
He stopped eating the sandwich and offered it to he nearest dog who took it and swallowed it whole. He looked at Sarah. “You wanted him to… you expected him to, so he did”, she said with a shrug. “You can have what you want, as long as people or animals are willing to give it to you, but you can mould the scenery to whatever you want, because that doesn’t hurt, can’t hurt anyone, since we all see and hear what we want to without it affecting anyone else”.
“Doesn’t that make conversation rather difficult?”
“Has it with us?”
“No, come to think of it, it hasn’t, has it?”
“Well, not for me, no… Nor for you, it seems. However, I choose to be on the same wavelength as you. You haven’t really tried talking to anyone else yet, but some won’t share with others, or won’t try to communicate with people they don’t know, but then that’s up to them, isn’t it? That’s the world they choose to live in… some people like people and choose to help, and some don’t, although that group is much smaller. Most people are basically nice… and helpful… in varying degrees, and the way forward is to become nicer and more helpful, if you want to put it that way… Onwards and Upwards!”
“I can see that I have lot to learn”.
“Everyone has a lot to learn, don’t worry about it. It is not a race, but most souls who arrive here need to be reminded about how life works, because the ways of the Surface have become imprinted upon them, but the impression does wear off, if you will allow it to, believe me…”
“It is going to take a bit of getting used to… I can see that… or does that mean that I am making problems for myself?”
“That is up to you. There’s nothing wrong with being aware of a situation, but dwelling on it, or worrying about it can make it worse, or even probably will make it worse. There is no need to be paranoid about what you think, but it is definitely worth knowing that what you think exists and could affect you and your existence… even be it only temporarily…”
“The problem here is that in infinity, ‘temporarily’ could be a very long time… perhaps, thousands of years!”
“Yes, but that needn’t be a problem… In infinity, thousands of years is less than a drop in the ocean, since there is a finite number of drops of water on any planet. What I am saying is that nothing can affect you adversely for ever except knowledge and that will always help, even though you, or one, may need to relearn, or remember, some lessons. Nothing can stop the steady improvement of the Self, even if some learn more quickly than others… As I said before, life is not a race or even a competition. And that is something that too many people have to learn, but there Ego’s are so fragile that they have to feel superior to those around them.
“The true name of the game, to use an expression, is co-operation, not competition… Life is a team sport, if you like, not a solo event… Treating life like a solo event leads to loneliness, misery and selfishness, whereas if you treat it as a team event, it becomes a party! Or at least can do – that should be the goal”.
“You make it all sound so lovely, my darling, Sarah, but then you always did have that knack. There isn’t a bad bone in your body…”
She looked herself up and down and smiled, “There aren’t any!”
“No, not now, but you know what I mean”.
“Yes, thank you, Willy. You’re not so bad yourself. You were a good husband and in difficult circumstances. I think we did our best for one another and our daughter”.
“Whether it was our doing or hers, or a bit of both, Becky has turned out all right. Anyway, enough of this Mutual Admiration Society meeting, I call it to a close. I’m not used to praise, I can’t take it”.
“No, I know what you mean… Getting a compliment out of a Welshman is like pulling teeth with chopsticks!”
“Was I that inattentive, Sarah dear? I didn’t mean to be… another regret to add to the list…”
“It wasn’t only you. It’s just the way people were. We were all to busy getting on with a hard life. Don’t worry about it, Willy, I know that I nagged you too sometimes”.
“Not much, and I probably deserved it. At least I got to get out, and even go to the pub, but that cottage became your jail… and I knew it, but pretended that I didn’t, because it suited me – I was selfish and I am so sorry for that now”.
“Don’t worry about it, Willy. It’s all behind us now. You wouldn’t be able to do that to me now though, even if you wanted to, although that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t let it happen to me again in another incarnation. Life’s funny like that”.
“If you say so, my dear. Shall we move on now?”
“Sure, if you’re ready. Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t know… Home, I suppose”.
“Home… All right. Do you want to live in town or on the mountain again?”
“Don’t you already have somewhere you stay?”
“Er, well, er, it’s difficult to explain…” She saw Willy’s face reflect an inner turmoil and she guessed what the cause was. “No, it’s not that. I haven’t shacked up with anyone else – there are no nasty surprises in store for you! It’s just that we don’t need houses, just like we don’t need bodies.
“Think about it. Why do people live in houses?”
“Well, er, it’s normal, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but they want shelter, privacy and security. However, we don’t need to shelter from the weather because we have nothing to shelter and the weather is of our own making. We don’t need privacy because we have no bodies, and anyway, if someone saw that you wanted to be alone, they would leave you alone – or most would… And security? We don’t have anything that can be stolen…”
“Yes, I see”.
“Having said that, lots of people still like to live in something somewhere. Life on the Surface seems to ingrain that very deeply into most people. So, what is it to be, within or without the city walls?”
“The city we were in before?”
“The City of Annwn? Yes, if you like”.
“Won’t it be hard to find somewhere at such short notice?”
“No, we’ll just make the city a bit bigger, and put our house in there; or make a tower a bit taller and put our flat in or on it. Whatever you like. Or we could stay at the Inn while we think about it”.
“Yes! I like that idea. We never did get much waiting on, did we? We only ever stayed in a hotel that week on our honeymoon in Rhyl. Yet when we first got married, I did so much want to give you a lady’s life of luxury, Sarah. It just didn’t work out like that… I’m sorry, my dear, so sorry”. Tears flowed down his cheeks. Sarah shuffled over and put her arms around him.
“I know that now, and I knew that then. I knew what I was letting myself in for, and I did it willingly, because I loved, and still love you. You were always the dreamer, not me, Will Jones!”
“You were my rock, Sarah”.
“And you mine”
“Come on, let’s go and see if there’s any room at the Inn”.
Willy drew his head back to get a better look at his wife, “Now you’re taking the Mick, aren’t you?”
“Yes”.
“Because there will be, won’t there?”
“Yes. You’re starting to get the hang of it”.
“Will our old drinking mates be there?”
“They could be…”
“… if we want them to be”.
“Yes”, she said mounting up. “Come on then, Willy boy, race you again, see if you can win this time” and she sped off with the hounds all around her.
“Wait for me! That’s not fair! I don’t know where Annwn City is! I can’t win!” He watched Sarah turn to face him. She was laughing out loud, looked in her twenties and was dressed like a maiden of the Fifteenth Century. He couldn’t quite remember, but he was almost certain that she had been wearing her normal Twentieth Century gear a few moments before.
They rode and laughed for miles, or was it minutes? Willy could not be certain. It seemed that every time he tried to get a fix on time or a place, it moved. He was trying so hard to think in a linear pattern, but he couldn’t. Every time he thought he had a fix on a concept, it seemed to squidge out between his grasp like jelly in a tight fist.
When he looked up from his contemplations, Sarah was rounding behind an outcrop of one of the two mountains and a fear of being alone in this strange land gripped him. He urged his horse on, and found himself at his wife’s side. She had stopped to wait for him out of site, but before her was the huge, pinkish, front stone wall of Annwn City.
A flag, a pennant really, Willy thought, fluttered in the breeze atop a round tower within the walls.
“Wow! It’s even more beautiful than I remember it”, he murmured.
“Good”, replied Sarah.
“I don’t remember it being pink though”.
“Don’t you? Oh, well, we can change that…”
“No, I like it… it makes it look more like a comic book castle… no disrespect. More like Camelot in the cartoons, than Camelot…”
“Was there a Camelot?”
“I don’t know, but if there were, I should imagine that it would have been more like Caerphilly Castle than that. I like it though, let’s go in. Now I can race you to the gates!”
Willy arrived at the moat a length ahead of Sarah, but he knew in his mind that she had let him win. He looked up to the crenellated battlements above the drawbridge to see three men, who he supposed were guards, peering down at him. He turned rather sheepishly to Sarah.
“Guard! Squire William Jones and his wife, Sarah Jones, request entrance to the City of Annwn”.
“Good day to you! Why do you make such a request unannounced?”
“We have travelled far and require shelter for a few days”.
One guard disappeared, leaving the other two staring at the new arrivals. A minute later, the third man returned. “Your request for shelter has been granted. Please wait while we provide access” and with that chains could be heard clanking, which caused Willy’s horse to rear up, and the drawbridge began to drop. When it was halfway down, they could see the portcullis being raised too. Willy grinned at Sarah, as if he were enjoying a role in a film.
When it was down, they trotted over the drawbridge and acknowledged the salutes from the guards inside. ‘This way, my Lord”, said Sarah light-heartedly and moved up in front. As they reined in their horses outside the inn they had visited before, the same landlord came running out to greet them.
“It is lovely to see you again, my Lord and Lady! I have the finest room anywhere in the city, if that is your requirement. Permit my lad to see to your horses. Boy! The horses, and look sharp about it!”
Willy and Sarah dismounted and followed the landlord inside. “It has been a lovely day, landlord”, said Willy getting into the swing of things.
“That it has, my Lord. Indeed it has. Shall I have your things taken up to our finest room?”
Will looked to Sarah, unaware that they had any ‘things’ to take up.
“Yes, landlord. Please do that, but ask your boy to be careful with them. The caskets hold great sentimental value for us. They have been in my husband’s family for generations”. Willy looked at Sarah with an open mouth.
“”Certainly, milady. Please, take a seat, if that be hour pleasure. Oi! You lot! Keep the noise down or I’ll stop your beer! We’ve got a real gentleman and his lady here now, and they don’t want to have to listen to you rabble swearing!”
Willy looked behind him and noticed six men drinking at a table, who he presumed were the same ones as before. Sarah, only smiled at him and urged him by gesture to sit opposite her. “Do you want anything, dear?” she asked.
“I could murder a Ploughman’s Lunch and a pint of bitter”, he replied. “All that riding had made me right hungry and thirsty”. Sarah peered briefly into his eyes, but it was enough to get her message across. She placed the order with their host.
“The riding didn’t really make me hungry or thirsty, did it?”
“No”, she smiled, “you did. You expected to feel hungry and thirsty… either that or it was he excuse that you might use because you wanted a pint and something to eat. Either way,it doesn’t matter”.
“Well, what was all that about our luggage? And what ‘things’?”
“Oh, that? I was just indulging him, like I do with you. He was expecting us to have luggage, so I decided not to disappoint him. I didn’t have to, but, well,it makes him feel better… in the same way that eating and drinking will make you feel better.
“Or to be more accurate, it won’t… it will produce the empty satisfaction that buying something gives you. It lasts a few hours or a few days, but then you have to do it again. Like getting drunk every night… sooner or later, it is hoped, one will discover the complete futility of it and fix the cause for wanting to get drunk every night, so that you one can get on with one’s real life”.
“Which is?”
“Which is to learn, to acquire knowledge, and to put that knowledge to good use by helping others. Wisdom and altruism, in two concepts, if you like. If you have no knowledge, your desire to be helpful or altruistic might actually be harmful. You might do more harm than good… AND by doing good, you enhance your own Karma, thereby helping yourself!”
“Win win”, he said, already convinced, but not wanting to hear the old mantra again. Hearing it still made him feel uncomfortable somewhere deep inside, even though he ‘knew’ it to be true. “Yes, I agree with you, but it doesn’t trip off my tongue as easily as it does yours. I’m not ready to sound like a Hari Kishna yet”.
“I know you’re not, but you have already jumped the highest hurdles. You believe in it, and you live by it – more or less – but you are not yet prepared to come out and admit it to anyone but me”.
He looked at her across the table, pursed his lips, then realised that he had done it, and so looked down at his hands. She had always been able to read him like a book, even before she had passed on. He was grateful when the landlady approached them with his food and drink. “Do you want anything, my dear?” he asked, immediately feeling foolish again.
Sarah grinned. “Yes, OK, I’ll have a cheese sandwich and a glass of water to keep you company. Thank you”. The landlady, a large jovial-looking fifty-odd-year-old in a rough dress and white apron, performed a slight curtsey, smiled broadly, and turned on her heel. “Won’t be a jiffy, madam”. She returned almost instantaneously and placed her wares before Sarah. “Enjoy your meal. Just shout if you need me. I’ll be just behind that wall in the kitchen”.
“You didn’t have to do that just to please me, Sarah, but that you anyway. The strange thing is that I’m not really hungry any longer”.
“That’s not all that strange really. What would be strange is if you didn’t want that pint either”, she replied with a wicked grin.
“Oh, I can still find room for that”, he laughed, playing along, but he realised that actually, he could take that or leave it as well. He took a mouthful and licked his lips. “Mmmm, Nectar”.
“Get away with you!” Willy looked down again, avoiding her gaze, and was surprised to see that Sarah’s plate was empty bar a few crumbs. He looked up to see her watching him and smiled, she tilted her head to the side and smiled back. Everyone was happy – they had all gotten what they wanted. Willy took a bite of cheese and willed he rest away, but he was still surprised when it vanished before his very eyes.
Sarah clapped silently and mouthed ‘well done’.
“OK, if we’re not going to eat,and not going to drink… very much, what are we going to do? Do you want to go upstairs?”
“Willy Jones! What are you suggesting?” she said pretending to be affronted/offended.
“No, no! I didn’t mean it like tha…”, but he saw her laughing. “I suppose we are still married, aren’t we? Do people, er… does that sort of thing go on here?”
“Yes, it still ‘goes on’, but we don’t have any bodies and don’t need to procreate. The thing is that not everyone realises that, so they carry on like they would have on the Surface. It’s the same as drinking and eating. If you want to feel close to someone, there are other ways of doing it, which would have happened if you were making love to someone you loved on the Surface.
“We can talk about it again, if you like, but basically, it’s more a melding or touching of souls rather than bodies… It’s akin to the feeling you get when you meet someone and you like them immediately, or not, as the case may be. That feeling is produced by your non-physical bodies touching and being either in or out of harmony”.
“Something else has been bothering me…” Sarah gave a slight upwards nod of encouragement. “Well, let’s say that this was an inn with ten bedrooms, and it was full. Then you come along and turn it into an eleven-bedroomed inn, wouldn’t the landlord notice? Or are they complicit?”
“No, not complicit, but he or and his wife might be aware of the change, although that is very seldom the case”.
“Well, I don’t get it then”.
“No, it is difficult, but it has to do with parallel existences, worlds or Universes, whatever you want to call them. Here and now, this inn has always had eleven bedrooms, but in another existence, it, or one very much like it, may only have five. If this landlord woke up in the ‘morning’ and his hotel only had five rooms, he would probably think that he had gone mad.
“Having said that, there are people, or Souls, who know about parallel existences and can move freely between them, because they understand The Truth, and so are not locked in by their own beliefs. It’s like the story about elephants…”
“Remind me…”
“Well, a mahout tethers a baby elephant to a deep stake so that it cannot escape. The baby elephant learns that trying to flee is futile and so stops trying. However, later, the elephant weighs two tons and could easily pull up that stake, but he doesn’t try to, because he ‘already knows’ – he has already learned – that it is impossible.
“People do not believe in parallel existences, they are not taught about them on the Surface, or not widely, and so they cannot perceive them.
“If we left this, let’s call it, eleven-bedroomed existence without paying our bill, this landlord would remember us for that, but the ‘same’ landlord in the five-bedroom existence would not know anything about it… or might know, or might have a vague feeling of ‘irrational’ distrust towards us. It is very difficult to tell how much people know without interacting with them.
“At least,it is for me. Someone more advanced than I might well be able to tell someone’s level of attainment from their Aura. I am still learning about these things in school – for want of a better word”.
“Yes, I see, said the blind man’. It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is, but that is the least of your worries… You, and everybody else, have all the time in the world to work it out. Come on, let’s go to our room, and I’ll show you what I meant by melding”.
—
Get more details about this series on Welsh Heaven in our bookshop
The ISBN of the paperback is: 9781068353840 (Life Night in Annwn)
The first volume is called: A Night in Annwn and the third, Leaving Annwn
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