Читать книгу An Angel Called My Name: Incredible true stories from the other side - Theresa Cheung, Theresa Cheung - Страница 15

My family is extremely close. Every year since we were children we gather together for Christmas and it is always a time for love, laugher and celebration. The same people, the same delicious food, the same jokes! It may seem boring to some people but it is comfortable and cosy for me.

Year after year we share wonderful moments and memories but in the last few years I noticed not just my own advancing age but my father’s slower pace as well. Last year, after dragging the Christmas tree up a flight of stairs, his eyes bright with anticipation, he fell and broke his hip. His routine hip surgery went well but the medical team noticed a problem with his blood count and ordered further testing. The tests revealed that dad had liver cancer.

And so that Christmas instead of laughing over our mince pies we were sitting anxiously in a hospital waiting room. About three months and two different hospitals later dad was finally allowed to go home. We made the day really special. We bought him all his favourite food, music and books and he spent the next few weeks reading, relaxing and chatting with us all.

Although we knew it was coming, the morning my mum woke to find that he had died in the night was still a shock. Feeling numb with grief I helped plan the funeral. Our family was incomplete now and I wondered if we would ever laugh again. Dad had always been such a practical joker and his lively, curious mind meant that conversations were never boring. I was 45 years old and I had never spent Christmas without my dad – I couldn’t imagine it without him now. There were too many things that would not be the same.

My grief was nothing compared to my mother’s loss and loneliness. After a long and happy marriage it was disorientating for her to be alone in the world without the sound of his voice, without the comfort of knowing he was there in the next room reading his books, waiting for her to join him.

I’ve always been an early riser, like my mother, and now with my dad gone I was up even earlier than normal. I didn’t want mum to go without the sound of someone’s voice for too long, alone with her thoughts and memories. One morning her voice sounded different. It was full of surprise and wonder instead of the sadness I had grown used to.

‘I have a mystery in my hands,’ she said, holding a book out towards me. She then went on to say that when she had got up that morning she found a copy of The Da Vinci Code open on the floor. ‘How did it get there?’ she asked me. I didn’t have a clue. My mum was a very tidy person. She didn’t read in bed and books would always be put away downstairs in the bookcase.

Later that day I shared the story with my husband, Robert, and he stared at me with his mouth open. ‘That is incredible. Don’t any of you remember what your mum said about the last conversation she had before she went to bed the night your dad died? When she helped him into bed he asked her if he could finish reading the final chapters of The Da Vinci Code because he wanted to know what the ending was. And she said it was too late but when he woke in the morning she would make him a cup of tea and read him the final chapters herself.’

Listening to this, my eyes started to sting as I pictured in my head my mother kissing my dad for the last time. So it was dad who had left the book open on the floor that morning. The open book was his light-hearted way of saying that there is another life after this one. He was just reading his final chapters in another room and waiting for us to join him.

Another story – this time from a man called Mark – and another angel with a sense of humour.