Free Spirit

17-year-old Brian Moore had only a short time to write something for a class.  The subject was what Heaven was like.  “I wowed ‘em,” he later told his father, Bruce.  “It’s a killer.  It’s the bomb.  It’s the best thing I ever wrote.”

It also was the last.  Brian’s parents had forgotten about the essay when a cousin found it while cleaning out the teenager’s locker at Teary Valley High School. Brian had been dead only hours, but his parents desperately wanted every piece of his life near them – notes from classmates and teachers, his homework.

Only two months before, he had handwritten the essay about encountering Jesus in a file room full of cards detailing every moment of the teen’s life.

But it was only after Brian’s death that Beth and Bruce Moore realized that their son had described his view of heaven.  It makes such an impact that people want to share it.  You feel like you are there.” Mr. Moore said.

Brian Moore died May 27, 1997, the day after Memorial Day. He was driving home from a friend’s house when his car went off Bulen-Pierce Road in Pickaway County and struck a utility pole.  He emerged from the wreck unharmed but stepped on a downed power line and was electrocuted.

The Moores framed a copy of Brian’s essay and hung it among the family portraits in the living room.  “I think God used him to make a point.

I think we were meant to find it and make something out of it,” Mrs. Moore said of the essay.  She and her husband want to share their son’s vision of life after death.  “I’m happy for Brian.  I know he’s in heaven. I know I’ll see him.

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