Cyril was one-hundred-and-three, and time had grown soft around the edges. Her bones were brittle; her breath fluttered.
Harold held her hand. Her eyes, once sharp as needles, searched the room without landing on anything tangible. “What’s going to happen when I die?” she whispered.
Harold stuttered. “You’ll go to heaven,” he said uncertainly.
“Heaven?” she scoffed lightly. “I don’t believe in heaven.” Her eyelids fluttered. The room slipped sideways. She sank, then returned, then drifted off again. “It’s a made up story. For oppressing the masses,” she murmured.
Harold squeezed her hand. “Stories can be exploited,” he said gently, “But that doesn’t change what’s real. Don’t let them steal it from you.”
“Even if it’s a real place, it’s not for me. I don’t want to be anywhere I don’t belong.”
“You belong where love lives,” he whispered. “And that’s what heaven is. Love without the loss.”
Cyril slipped again into an even deeper daydream. She saw darkness, thick as velvet. Then, like a match struck in a cave, a white shimmer bloomed in the midst of her sight. And with that shimmer came a panorama of memory:
-Her firstborn’s hand in hers, impossibly tiny.
-Her husband John’s laugh, filling the kitchen with warmth.
-The afternoon she fed a homeless person at the train station.
-The night she forgave her sister, even though the wound was deep.
-The little ways she helped carry other people’s burdens when they didn’t know how.
Her life was illuminated before her like stained glass held up to the sun, with every colour now visible. “But I don’t believe in God,” she thought, in the direction of the light.
The light pulsed gently, as if amused. Belief? it intimated. Belief is only the doorway. Love is the house.
More memories flickered by. Of the way she’d loved others all her life, even strangers. Of the way she’d thought well of people. Of the hope she’d had for humanity. Of the faith she’d had that things were ultimately good, and the way she’d been a vessel for it.
The light opened, inviting her in.
“But I haven’t been perfect,” she thought. “I’ve made mistakes.”
You served the light, the presence whispered, without a mouth, without words, but unmistakably true. Even when you didn’t know its name.
Holding her hand, Harold felt her last breath leave her body. His eyes widened. “What do you see?” he whispered.
Her voice was thin as a reed. “I see light,” she breathed.
And in her final heartbeat, she leaned into the light, the way a child leans into their parent’s arms.
Harold felt her body go still. Cyril’s lips curved into the ghost of a peaceful smile.
