Lights in the Night

My sister Toni who was very fond of Drew and misses him a lot, came with her friend Beth to visit me for five days. I put them both in downstairs bedrooms separated by a smaller room I call "The Children's Room". 

I call it that because it's the room that houses all their baby and  childhood photographs, pictures they've drawn over the years,  trophies that remind them of long forgotten triumphs on the playing fields and academic stages of their lives and a closet full of old clothes and a few toys I can't part with yet. Everything here is a reminder of the time these children were on loan to us. A time that in the scheme of things was much too short. 
Especially in Drew's case.

But he's not far away, it seems. On the first morning of my sister's stay, she arrived at the top of the stairs in her sweats looking for a cup of coffee. Her hair was askew (very) her face was pink and she was using her hands a lot as she spoke. 

"Last night, I said goodnight to Beth, walked through the Children's Room, turned off the lamp in there, went into my room and got into bed." She flung her hair back from her face. "I read for a while and was just about to turn my lamp off and go to sleep when I looked over tho the half open door of the kids room - and the light was on." 

"You made a mistake?" I asked. Although I was sure that she hadn't.

"No. I distinctly remember turning the light off because I had to hunt for the switch. I turned it off! Sister, My Sister. Off!"

"Okay." Said I.

"So I went back in and turned it off again. and went back to bed."


I waited.

"Half an hour later when I was almost asleep, I cracked my eyes open and there's Beth's standing beside my bed saying she thought I'd turned the light off in the Children's Room... I nodded and Beth said, "Well it's back on again!"  It's Drew, isn't it?" Toni said.


Of course it's Drew. "He came to play," I smiled.


It happened the following night too. But this time Toni decided to visit. "So I sat on the the bed in there and chatted, I asked how he was, told him how I was - said I liked being here - you know..."
She stopped for a moment. "And then I told him how glad I was he came."

***

 
 The same thing happens to the lights in the hotel in Colorado where Drew used to work.  And why wouldn't they? He continues to be the light in our lives he always was on earth.