Using many elements from her own life, author Mary Curran Hackett published her Christian-themed novel, Proof of Heaven, in 2011. The novel’s plot follows the lives of a mother and her young son, Colm, who suffers from a rare cardiologic problem which causes him to frequently flatline – in a sense, to “die” and “come back to life” over and over again. Hackett also has a similar issue: Malignant Neurocardiogenic Syncope Disorder, which results in frequent cardiac arrhythmias. Moreover, her son inherited the condition – Hackett’s memories of watching him collapse and stop breathing as an infant inspired the novel. According to reviewers, the novel doesn’t live up to its potential. As Kirkus Reviews puts it, “Colm’s medical condition and repeated resurrections offer intriguing narrative possibilities. But, weighed down by sentimental prose and predictable characters, Hackett’s premise stalls out.” Colm, a bright, inquisitive, and sensitive seven-year-old boy, has a complicated medical condition that terrifies his mother, Cathleen: he often experiences episodes of cardiac arrest that don’t seem to have a cause – or at least, don’t have a cause that has been correctly diagnosed by doctors who don’t seem to care much about the family. The beautiful and nurturing Cathleen is suffering in other ways too. Her job is a soulless grind, her brother, Sean, is a firefighter who has become an increasingly unmanageable alcoholic, and she has never been able to get over the fact that Colm’s father, Pierce, abandoned the family and later died. In order to cope with Colm’s heart-wrenching illness, Cathleen turns to the only support system she has in the face of her son’s constant dying and being returned to life: her deep and abiding Catholic faith. Even when she isn’t sure that either God or science can ever cure Colm, Cathleen never stops patiently and devotedly performing the many rituals of her faith. Eventually, however, Cathleen and Colm meet a new doctor, Gaspar Basu. He is an electrophysiologist-cardiologist, practicing a super specialized branch of medicine that allows him to not only take Colm’s condition seriously but to also correctly diagnose the boy. Unfortunately, what the family learns is that Colm’s heart defect isn’t correctable – instead, it is progressive and eventually terminal. Nevertheless, Gaspar implants a pacemaker into Colm’s chest to prevent the cardiac arrhythmias or at least to correct them when they happen. Cathleen is deeply moved by Dr. Basu’s caring and attentive manner, which is the result of a tragic backstory. Gaspar feels connected to both mother and son because he himself lost his wife and child and has never been able to get over the sense that he was responsible for the accident that killed his son and the depression that eventually caused his wife to take her own life. Now, Gaspar recognizes that he is being given a second chance at life and the opportunity to find some sense of closure. As everyone around Colm realizes that any moment could be their last with the boy, his illness ends up bringing peace and healing to those who need it. Sean finds the strength to give up his drinking, and Gaspar and Cathleen allow their feelings for each other to blossom into a happy and loving relationship. However, it is Colm who turns out to be in the middle of a complicated set of emotions. As he confesses to Gaspar, Colm is an atheist. Because he has never seen anything but black nothingness in the seven times that he has flatlined, he has decided that there is probably no God, and definitely no heaven or afterlife. He hasn’t told his mother because he worries about upsetting her. When it becomes clear that the pacemaker is only slightly prolonging Colm’s life rather than curing him, Cathleen decides to embark on a last-ditch effort to save her son by dragging him to the town of Assisi, Italy, to pray for a miraculous cure from St. Francis. This, too, doesn’t work out, and actually makes Colm’s life more difficult in the process. Cathleen eventually realizes that her quest for a cure is becoming selfish and that she has to let Colm go so that he can spend his last days in peace. The group takes a road trip across America as a way of saying goodbye to the boy. As he is surrounded by the love of his family, Colm suffers cardiac arrest. As his mother cradles his dying body, Colm starts having an out of body experience that becomes a vision of the afterlife. He is embraced by his dead relatives and then reunites with his long-lost father. The novel ends with Colm seemingly seeing heaven, getting the proof that it exists: “Then, like a sudden spark that arrives from a singular, unknown source, Colm opened his eyes and he saw. He saw it all so clearly.”

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Mary Curran Hackett

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