A light? I didn’t see any light. I’ll tell you what I did see.

Now, I’d been in the hospital for some time — I’d been in and out of the hospital, you know, but this time I knew, this is it, so I was just waiting to go. My brother and his wife came most days, to sit with me and wait too. So at the end, Lou is down the hall in the men’s, and I tried to tell Roxie she should run get him, but I couldn’t get enough breath, and then I was on the front walk of a house.

And the first thing I noticed was, I’m standing up and breathing easy. Standing there in the sun. The next thing I noticed was, I knew the house — my grandparents’ house. Same green front door, same stoop, same muddy boot brush sitting out there.

I walked around the side of the house to the porch, it was a sunny day so I guess I was figuring they’d be out there. I came around the house, and my grandmother was in a flowerbed doing something or other, and she was her younger self. Her hair was still mostly dark and she still had it braided along the sides and twisted up in back, that old-fashioned style. My grandfather was there too, he had a model spread out on a card table and he was gluing, and I never saw him wear that pair of glasses but I know how he lost them. Fishing. Fishing with his friend Busy who lived in Barnegat Light all year round.

Then I saw Joe walking up a hill ahead of me, my friend Joe from down the street, and we were cutting up to the top of Schooley’s Mountain to camp out there. We saw a bear that time, just a medium-sized one. I think it was that time, anyway.

Then I saw Greta Finch under a light outside the school gymnasium, putting powder on. Then it was raining and I was at a baseball game. Then I was here. Passed through. Then it was over. There wasn’t any light.

My name is Curtis Cresswell. I died of complications of lung cancer October 10, 1968.

April 5, 2004

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