I HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT

I HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT

They had entered the Territory Inn, which was their favorite restaurant.  Because it was a few blocks off Main Street and near the highway, they had to find parking where they could, and since they were in their own cars, they looked for a place where they could park together.  The Territory Inn was large and also had outdoor seating, but in April that part of the restaurant was closed, even though the weather was quite clement.  Since they had to park more than a block away, they walked side by side, chatting, as they always did.  She was a bit over forty, stylish and slender, and had already begun to fight off the gray.  He was a few years older, broad shouldered and visibly graying.  They met at the bank where she worked, since he had more flexibility in his work schedule than she did, not having to punch a clock.  He waited inside until she was able to leave, and they talked about whether they would go to the Territory Inn or one of the other places in town.  But she liked the Territory, so that’s where they went.

     As they walked up the block, they talked about the usual things, until he told her that he had gone to church on Easter Sunday.  She stopped short, let go his arm, and looked at him.

     “Well, this is something new.  You’ll have to tell me all about it.  You don’t go to church.  I’ll want to know what you thought you were up to.”

     He continued walking, ignoring her sarcasm. 

     “Well, we have the whole night.  Not to worry, James.  I’ll get it from you.”

     “Claudie, if I didn’t want to talk about it, I wouldn’t have mentioned it.”

     “Just tell me, does it have anything to do with Jean?”

     She said that with not a little trepidation in her voice.  Jean was his wife, and when she passed away, the trauma of it was terrible to him.  That’s when they started going out for dinner together on Friday nights.  She was hardened to the travails of married life, having had a husband who cheated and lied for years, and who took a mighty effort to shed herself of.  But that was long ago, and she had become set in her ways.  But she and James have known each other since high school, and before, and they had always been friends.  Now, they had become each other’s source of solace.  Her for him more than the other way round.

     They got themselves seated and ordered drinks, he a Bud, and she a Tom Collins.  That was pretty much their usual.  On this night, the waitress was new and didn’t know them.  They were placed by the window that looked out onto the patio.  Daylight was failing, and passing cars already had their headlights on.  Passersby on foot looked in as they wafted along.  Claudie, always curious about what went on inside him, asked him to tell about going to church.  He had talked about the service in mocking tones, and this surprised her even more—it shocked her.

     “‘I have seen the light,’ he said, making a broad gesture with his arms, ‘and the resurrection of the Lord.’ 

     “It was Easter Sunday.  One expects to hear things like that at this time of year.  And, as one expects, the preacher carried on, getting more emotional minute by minute.  Mostly, at times like this, I stop thinking altogether, and stop feeling, too.  I become numb.  All that effort at self-delusion makes me crazy.  And the people responding, some of them in trance-like states, some of them matching the preacher’s emotionally shaking voice.  Can you imagine?  Numb.  I mean numb.  It’s the only way I can bear it.  ‘I’ve seen Jesus,’ he chanted, ‘He’s alive forever!  Peace on Earth.’

     “Why do you even bother to go, then, if it makes you feel like that?  Anyway, go on.  So?”

     “When the service is over, it’s over.  People go back to their lives.  And you know what those lives are like.  They break every commandment.   I mean, without even thinking about it.  It’s so habitual.  The meannesses.  The thoughtless cruelties.  Infidelities.  Intolerances.  Ill will.  Ungenerousness.  All the little sins that make people people.  That should make me even more numb, but I go back to my own life, and it all recedes.  ‘I have seen the light’ doesn’t seem somehow to move people to be any better Monday through Saturday.  Those who are decent folk don’t generally need motivation by that sort of thing.  And those who do forget all about it when they walk out.  Walking out.  That’s the way to put it.”

     “Ha!” she ejaculated.  “You’re such a cynic.  Why paint everybody with the same brush?  You gotta get over that.  You’ve always been like that.  But you just shouldn’t go to church in the first place feeling like that.”

     “I don’t go to church often.  You know me.  I’m not an atheist.  I don’t go because I can’t somehow put the kind of trust in people that real belief calls for.  Belief in a church, that is.  I believe in God.  Most of the time.  When I think about it.  But that’s different from believing in the rightness of a church.  A church is only people.  I have a cousin who’s a preacher.  I’ve told you about him.”

“Charlie?”

“Yeah, Charlie.  He invented his own sect and assembled a large congregation.  It took him a long time.  But it was worth the effort.  He makes a lot of money off those people.  Everyone in the family thinks he’s a shyster. I don’t know if he is or if he isn’t—I never sat in on one of his services.  But the longer one lives, the more one sees it: everyone has his own agenda.  Church people as much as anyone else.  I feel suckered when I walk out of church, so I don’t go very often.  I went this time because it was Easter and because a month ago I had survived that accident that should’ve killed me.  There was something about the resurrection, yes, something personal, that pushed me.  So I went.”

     “What was it?” she said curiously.  She knew about the accident, of course, but he had not spoken of it in an intimate way with her, so she thought it was still too painful for him to talk about.  Her interest had suddenly piqued by his mention of it, and that sort of jolted her.  “What ‘pushed you’? You mean surviving the accident itself, that pushed you?  Coming close to death?”

      “The personal thing that pushed me into church that Easter Sunday?” he said.  He paused to think, so he took a sip of beer.  “You know, we live every day mostly running in grooves our routines score in our lives, and so we seldom actually see beyond or outside of those grooves—we see what we expect to see, what those grooves make for us, and we encounter what we expect to encounter, the same.  Routine governs.  But when we get pushed out of those grooves, when routine is upset, everything we always take for granted suddenly looks different.  That’s what the accident did to me.  It shook me out of my groove.  It made the ground I walk on seem different, the air was different, sunlight was different.  The animals that fill our everyday world—dogs and cats, squirrels, rabbits, robins, blue jays—all seemed unlike what I always thought them to be.  But “different” and “unlike” don’t tell what I mean.  I’m not sure I can tell.”

     He paused and sipped his beer, thinking.  She looked around at the diners.  There were several couples like themselves, men and women about their ages, and quite a few tables with families, some with the highchairs to prop up the babies.  It was dim, and light popular music played over the stereo system, inoffensively low.  The mood in the place was calm, but she was on edge.  She had wanted him to talk about the accident, and now it seemed like it was going to come out.  He sipped his beer and she her Tom Collins.  The waitress had put a basket of corn chips with some salsa on their table when they first sat down, and now she came with her order pad, cleared away the remains of the chips, and asked if they were ready to order or if they wanted another round.  Instead of ordering they had another round.  It was getting dark outside and was warm for April.  Their table being beside the window, they both looked out to the patio where the chairs outside still rested on top of the tables.  It was warm, and passersby wore only shirts, carrying their jackets and coats.

     The waitress wore a red and white checked dress with a white apron.  She also wore white Nikes.  She was young but not that young, so his interest in her seemed natural.  He smiled broadly at her when she put the drinks down.  Claudie, sitting across from him, smiled herself, amused at how obviously he was driven by his impulses.  When they got together at the Territory, each was a solace to the other.  She touched his hand, bringing his gaze back to her from the retreating form of the waitress. 

On very rare occasions they would sip a Scotch and soda.  But when they did that, the night tended to be short.  He preferred beer, and she something tall and cold.  His talking about Easter led him to talk about the accident.  That subject had been carefully avoided over the last several weeks.  Once she brought it up herself, and he became almost mute.  She had to change the subject or lose him for the night.  Inevitably.  But tonight, he picked up on it himself.  It was in his mind because of his going to church on Easter Sunday, and she thought that what he wanted to talk about was his going to church.  The accident and his going to church were connected.  As he said, he had a feeling about the resurrection.   

     “I don’t know about grooves,” she said, “but when my son died, I felt like something in the world died with him.  I know what you mean, but I wouldn’t call it grooves.”

     “Doesn’t matter.  Like, what do you mean ‘something in the world’?—people who lose someone close say ‘the light of the world has gone out,’ but that’s a metaphor.”

     “I don’t know about metaphors.  Some people may feel what happens like that.  It’s not what I felt.  It’s more like what made me get up in the morning and made me want to go to work and all that.  Something of that died with Jimmy.  Light?  I don’t know.”

     “How is Phil?”

     He and Claudie have been divorced for many years.   

     “Phil’s fine,” she said.  “He took it hard.  You remember how we had to walk beside him.  He gave us all a fright.”

     “Yeah.  He couldn’t follow the coffin out of church.” 

     She had tears starting.  She wanted to change the subject but couldn’t, so she picked up her Tom Collins and held the glass out for him to clink his glass against, which he did.  Then, in one long tip she drained what remained in the glass.  He had taken a sip of his own, and still holding his glass up, watched her down the rest of her drink.  He smiled, but he couldn’t do the same.  He took a second sip and put the glass down on its coaster.  His blondish hair was quite gray now, and his face was starting to show signs of age.  Finally.  They were both fit, not yet ready to think of themselves as getting old.  He looked out the window.  It was getting darker, and since the patio wasn’t opened for dining, the lights weren’t on out there.  Cars zipped along the highway beyond.  People going to Minneapolis or Kansas City, he thought, Rapid City or Sioux Falls.  All those people.  Each one a world unto himself.  All those worlds. 

     “We should be out shopping for the weekend, James, or takin’ a walk.  Did you till your garden yet?  My neighbor did mine already.”

     “No.  Let’s have another drink,” he said, finally draining his glass. 

“Tell me about the grooves,” she said.  “How you felt after the accident.”         

     He called the waitress over, and she came with a smile.  He  did like her.  He liked people who were pleasant, she knew, and upbeat like her.  They made him feel happy.  She herself was not like that. 

     “What’s wrong with you?” he said to her, noticing how she took in his mood change when the waitress came. 

     “Not a thing,” she said, smiling. 

     When the waitress came back with their drinks, he picked his up, clinked glasses with her, and took a sip. 

     “The accident was terrible.  A pickup truck ran a stop sign at sixty miles an hour just as I entered the intersection.  It hit me on the driver’s side fender just at the door.  The collision was so powerful, the rear end of my car smashed into the rear bumper of the pickup with such force it was demolished.  The car, you know, my old four-door Chevy Impala, was so mangled and smashed that no one expected to find me alive inside.  But I was.  Bruised.  Unconscious.  Nothing broken, though.  But I was  badly banged.  I was unconscious for a long time.  When I try to remember, to recall the moment the truck hit me, I find that it’s totally gone.  What I recall is seeing the pickup speeding at me, but not very distinctly, so that I can’t describe it very well, except to say that it had a very big bumper, and then I can remember being in the hospital room.  I don’t think I can recall any details of waking-up.  I can, though, very vividly recall the utter strangeness of those days following my release from the hospital.  It was not the same world I lived in before the accident.  Everything seemed new, fresh, as though it had just been created.  Colors vibrated. Light seemed unearthly, ethereal, especially in the mornings and evenings.  People seemed alive, or rather, their aliveness seemed especially odd, as though to be alive was a circumstance that had just come to be.  All this was upsetting, because it forced me to pay attention to myself in ways I had never done before. 

     “But then....”

     “The whole point is, don’t you see, that nothing really changed.  The whole world was the same as it had always been.  Even I didn’t ‘change,’ you see.  What changed is how I saw everything.  I was still me.  The way things looked and the way I felt about them, the way things are for real, all that came to me after the accident.”

     “The way things are for real?  You were knocked for a loop, James, the way things are for real doesn’t ordinarily include a James knocked for a loop.  Don’t forget, I saw your Impala.  I can imagine.  What you experienced was caused by being knocked for a loop.  Don’t get mystical.  That’ll drive you crazy.”

     “What if what I felt in those weeks after the accident is for real, Claudie?  And we lose that feeling when we fall into those grooves of habit and routine, like I said.  What then?  I can’t discount it.  You shouldn’t discount it.  It tells us something.”

     “Like what?”

     “That there are things about the world we don’t know.”

     “That’s no surprise.”

     “Don’t be cynical.  Look who’s being cynical now.”

     “I mean, you had an experience.  Good.  But you can’t say the world is different because of it.  The world is what it is.  But the world is also always full of surprises.  So what?”

     “I don’t get your point.”

     He was beginning to feel insulted by her attitude and was becoming resentful.  This was not the way he wanted his talking about the accident to go.  When he became resentful he usually retreated into himself, became silent and incommunicative.  She saw it happening and to help him out of it she offered an insight of her own.

     “Do you remember when my mother died?”

     “Yes,” he said, looking across the dim open room at other people sitting at the tables.

     She could see she was losing him.  But she went on anyway, hoping she could lure him back by telling him something she never told anyone before.

     “I was with her when she died, remember?”

     “Yeah,” he said, still not looking at her.

     “I never told anyone this, but she was sitting up in her bed, the back part of the bed raised almost vertical.  I didn’t notice any change in her.  We were talking, and I was spoon feeding her some mashed potatoes and gravy, and she suddenly looked toward the door of the room.  I expected a nurse to be coming in when I followed her glance, but there was no one there.  My mother, though, kept looking at the doorway, and she finally said, “Oh, my mother’s here.”  I was astonished.  Just then a nurse did come in.  I was standing beside the bed with a spoon filled with mashed potatoes and gravy, ready to feed my mother, when the nurse hollered at me.  I thought, ‘What?’  ‘What?’  But she took my arm and pulled me away from the bed and pushed me out the door, calling ‘Code Six’ into the hallway.  All of a sudden people came rushing to the room, some carrying machines for I didn’t know what.  I stood in the hall across from the door, looking in, and all I could see were people working on her.  After a while, the nurse who pushed me out came to me and told me that my mother had passed away and that they did all they could, she was sorry.”

     He looked at her now.  His interest was aroused.  She could see that.  So she made the connection that prompted her to tell him the story.

     “Do you think my mother suddenly, before she died, somehow felt, lived in, the same world you did after your accident?”

     “Hmm,” he said, thoughtful.  “She was still in this world, so it wasn’t the ‘afterlife’ she experienced.  Who can say?  Her mother came to her.  That’s really odd.  But I’ve heard stories like that before, you know.  I can tell you one myself.  I don’t know.  What do you think?  This was YOUR experience.”

     The waitress came back with her pad and asked them if they were ready to order.  They looked at each other, and she nodded that she was ready.  So they both ordered.  They didn’t need menus because they came there every Friday, and they both had favorites.  She ordered the Shrimp Scampi and he had the prime rib.  The waitress returned with filled water glasses and said she’d be right back with their salads.  They both put their napkins on their laps. 

     “I told you a similar story, remember?  The one about my uncle?”

     “I remember your saying something about him.  That was a while ago.  No, refresh my memory.”

     “My aunt kept him in a hospital bed in the living room because their bedroom was upstairs.  They used to watch TV together.  She’d hold his hand.  He mostly slept because of the pain meds.  But then one night when she was holding his hand, he spoke to her, saying that they had to get ready to go to the party.  She asked him, What party, Frank?  And he said they were all gathering for the party, and he told her all the people who were coming—his aunts and uncles, his mother and father, his brother, his brothers-in-law—all those people who had already died.  She said, You go to that party, Frank.  I don’t want to go.  And then ten minutes later he died.  Those were his last words—they had to get ready for the party.  That’s what was going through his mind at the very time he was dying.”

     “Well, I don’t know what to make of it.  People imagine or experience those final moments in comforting ways, I guess.”

     “Unless….”

     “Yes, unless there’s really something going on.”

     “But when that pickup hit me, all memory of the moment of impact got wiped.  There is no awareness of anything at all.  I can’t even recall waking up in the hospital.  I can recall being awake.  There are things the mind shelters us from.  Maybe what my uncle and your mother experienced was a form of that sheltering.”

     “But don’t you see, if that happens, what it implies?”

     “What?  I don’t follow you.”

     “It means you and your mind are different things.  I mean, if your mind is sheltering you, protecting you, by inducing illusions, that implies it’s an independent actor, doesn’t it?”

     “Sort of like some part of you that is aware of what’s happening, and takes measures to protect the other part from the impact of it?  That is strange.  I don’t know what to think about that.”

     “After your accident, you say the whole world seemed different, more alive, more real.  What was your mind doing to you?  Getting you reacquainted with the world after you were almost ripped from it?  Strange way to do it, if you ask me.”

     “I don’t know.  You’re the one who thought what I experienced and your mother experienced might be variations of the same thing.  Let’s say they are.  The big question is, does it all come to a screeching halt when you die?”

     “It’s impossible to know.  But those experiences, you can’t make them happen, they rise up only in extreme moments, and even then you can’t depend on them happening.  We don’t get reports of these kinds of things from everyone.  But still, it makes you think, doesn’t it?”

     “Yeah.  It can be solacing.  When my time comes, it would be a great comfort if I saw Jean come into the room.”

     “That would be a comfort.  I can’t help thinking that if the mind did that it has to mean it was acting in your interest, compassionately.  Like it was, in fact, not you.  But concerned about you.  Cared for you.  See what I mean?”

     “Of course.  I don’t know what to make of it.  Here come our meals.  Let’s eat.  I’m hungry, even a little drunk.  How about you?”

     “I need to eat, too.  I’m plastered.  You’re going to have to call a taxi to get us home.  Unless, of course, we come back to our senses after the food.  Do you think that’ll happen?”

     “What ‘senses’?  We lost those a long time ago.  Just listen to us talk.  What a conversation we had this time.  Next time we have to talk about nothing more serious than the Memorial Day holiday.  Any plans?”

     “Save that for next week.  Hmmm, the shrimp are always good.”