DECEMBER 10
Even as I stood there, the tears streaming down my face, I
felt a kind of joy for him, a strange gaiety almost, that he
would so soon be released, and I had a sense that he stood
now on the threshold of some great adventure...So it was
in a strange way not only a time of terrible sorrow, but a
moment of light, as I stood there telling him goodbye.
—MARTHA WHITMORE
HICKMANIt was my father who lay on the bed, dying. I had expected
the sorrow. Though I have faith in a life beyond death, I had
not expected the strange rush of happiness, the expectation
of adventure and joy. Not right then. So it was all the more
a gift, though a fleeting one.
None of us knows what lies on the other side of death,
but we have had clues—in stories handed down, in experi-
ences of our own, in books detailing near-death experi-
ences—that offer great hope and promise that beyond death
are light and welcome and unimaginable peace and joy.
What comfort these clues can be to us on the dark days. We
pore over them as over rosary beads—Yes, we think. Hope
is justified. Everything will turn out right in the end.
In my times of darkness, lead me to the light.