I Can See The Light!
My Father-in-Law was close to death. He lay in my arms, his large frame reduced to almost skeletal proportions by the disease that had long wracked his body. Apart from shaking his hand or slapping him on the back this was the first time I'd ever held him close. Englishmen are not normally prone to showing such signs of affection with other men. He was high on morphine and had started to ramble incoherently. I knew that the end was very near. Suddenly, in a loud clear voice he called out 'I can see the light! I CAN see the light! Not knowing what to say (for who amongst us has great experience of imminent death?) I replied gently 'Then follow it Tom'. Moments later he gave a convulsive shudder and stopped breathing. I felt an overwhelming sense of relief sweep over me. My wife and I had taken turns nursing him for three long months and had watched as her father, my friend, was slowly and painfully eaten away. It was with a great sense of relief that I laid his head on the pillows. Grief would come later. Straightening up I looked down at him. His eyes were open and clouded with the mist of death. Reaching down I tried to close them. It didn't work like in a movie though, where the hero passes his hand over the eyes of his dead comrade. Eventually and with difficulty I managed the task. As I was leaving the room I glanced back at the body. His eyes were open once more! I panicked thinking that he'd come back! Swiftly I crossed to the bed, bent down and placed my head close to his. There was no sign of life. It was purely a reflex muscle reaction that had re-opened his eyes. Once again I closed them and recalled that people used to place coins on the eyelids of the dead. I looked in his bedside cabinet (for I knew he kept some old pre-decimal coinage there) and found two large pennies with the head of Queen Victoria on them. Carefully I placed them on his closed eyes and left the room. The hallway was dark and I reached toward the light switch. Without my touching it the light came on! Bemused I switched it off. It came back on again on its own volition! I was too tired, too emotionally drained to rationalize what was happening. I remembered Tom's last strongly spoken words 'I CAN see the light!' I sat in my father-in-laws armchair my mind a blank. Suddenly his phone rang. Picking up the handset I answered the call. There was a faint time lapse and a hollow echo. 'Is Dad there?' Is he OK? It was my brother-in-law, Tom jnr, who was calling from Perth in Australia.& Before I could reply he continued 'I've just had a dream about Dad. He was standing at the foot of my bed and where his eyes were he had two large black holes!' There was a pause. 'He's dead isn't he? But why are his eyes black? How could Tom jnr have 'seen' his father virtually at the instant of his death from ten thousand miles away? How could he have known that I'd placed the coins on his father's eyes, which appeared to him in his 'dream' as large black holes? Without warning every light in the house came on. 'Yes' I thought ' Tom is indeed following the light'.
Cerberus, London, England
