“It might be a little too out there for you,” says my friend, Alex.

“Too out there?” I ask my fellow Leos, who have gathered together to harness the energy of the Fire Horse year. She’s preaching to the choir.

“OK. I highly recommend the book Journey of Souls,” she adds. The book, she tells us, was written by Michael Newton, who holds a doctorate in counseling psychology and is a certified master hypnotherapist. It is unabashedly abounding with “case studies of life between lives.” Using hypnosis, Newton gained insight from subjects who recalled their previous deaths. Yeah, it is way out there. But isn’t it comforting to think that there’s more awaiting us after our time on Earth — in this body — ends?

I immediately download the Audible and get to listening. And I reflect back on all of the people I’ve loved deeply and lost in my life. My best friend, Melissa, died when we were just 7 years old from leukemia. For a while after, I wrote letters to her and left them face up on my bed. “So that she can read them in heaven,” I told my mom.

•

Less than two years later, my father’s father, Grampa, succumbed to his own battle with cancer. He was just 59 years old, 11 years older than I am and 11 years younger than my parents are right now. As he lay in his hospital bed toward the end, he told my grandmother, Nana, “It’s OK, he said I could go home now.” Perplexed, she told him the doctor had said no such thing.

Their home was a staple of my childhood. The year I turned 7 was the year we moved to Wilbraham, Massachusetts, the same town my parents grew up in and where I was lucky to cross paths with Melissa. Living just 5 or so minutes away from us, Grampa dropped in often, “helping” my parents with house projects — aka, shooting the crap and munching on donuts while Mom and Dad drilled, sanded and painted.

We, too, frequented their house — a mustard-yellow split level. To this day, I adore daffodils because they remind me of the hundreds that bloomed every spring in their backyard. Nana always handed me her scissors and let me go to town on cutting them, filling vases all over her house.

Their small family room featured rust-colored shag carpeting, a coordinating floral sofa and a portrait of “Paws,” the gray polydactyl cat my dad had growing up. But the pièce de résistance was Grampa’s leather recliner. It sat in the corner, angled for prime TV viewing. My older brother, Dana, and I used to go to the closet, pull out Grampa’s plaid driving caps and place them on our heads. Then we’d occupy his Barcalounger, lay way back and relax, pretending we were him.

As his illness progressed, he spent more and more time in that chair until, one day, it was empty. I can still hear his voice calling me his “little chicken” and I can picture his face, his big, hooded blue eyes and the gap in his front teeth. (His mom was British, after all.)

After he died in the fall of my fourth-grade year, he visited me in a dream. We were in his driveway, selling some of his things in a yard sale. He told me it was OK, that he was OK, and that I’d see him again one day.

As I get deeper into Journey of Souls, I learn that Earth, according to Newton’s research, is a place those of us who have gone to the other side can revisit, that we have soul groups that we can reconnect with. But on the other side is where home actually lies — not here on Earth.

I think about my grandfather and wonder if it’s true. Will I see him again one day? I honestly don’t know and I will wait as long as I can to find out. But I would like to think that he did indeed make it home, just like he said he would.  OH

Cassie Bustamante is editor of O.Henry magazine.