When I thought about my grandad dying, my child mind’s eye saw him, standing, smiling, on the compost heap facing west and surrounded by sunbeams. His arms were raised towards the setting sun, like a statue in a church, Jesus perhaps, suffering the little children to come unto him, or St Francis summoning the animals, like a picture in a Ladybird book. He was falling forwards, gloriously, over the hedge and into the light of heaven as gentle scented breezes blew and angels sang with closed eyes and rounded mouths.
Many years later, an unknown man lay in an ancient dim lit ward. He was the furthest from the nurses’ desk, in the darkest, quietest corner. Nothing more could be done for him and it was just a question of waiting. He was sheltered by a skimpy screen; old fashioned, with faded fabric gathered on a metal frame with chipped and flaking paint, and squeaky wheels.
There were no sunbeams, no smiles, no winds of heaven blowing, no angels singing. Just the screen, a low wattage bulb and the private sounds of eighteen sleeping men.
I paused for a moment at his bedside. My heartstrings stretched out to him, and as I watched he darkly was, then darkly was not. He had darkly, quietly, gone. I did what was needed to confirm death, then I felt a touch on my shoulder. I turned to see a slim girl dressed in grey.
‘Thank you for seeing him off, she said. ‘He’ll be known again now.’ Then she left.
‘A workhouse ghost?’ I asked the nurse, as I wrote in his records.
‘Nay, pet. This one brought his own.’
Back then, I put it down to lack of sleep and wandered off into the dawn to find tea.
Over the nearly forty years since then, I have thought about the man and the girl many times, and the indication of the possibility of there being something more, something bigger, than we encounter as we go about the business of living.