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Going Home – Colm Keane

Ann, who comes from Bray, Counyt Wicklow but who lives in the UK.

My sister died a few years ago. She died of a stroke. She was 71 and had a family of 11 children. They all took it badly. It was a tragedy. I came back to Bray when I heard she was sick.  I came back three times and I was there with her at the very end, when she died. She was the first one to die in my family.

Not long afterwards I collapsed with a heart attack. I was having my dinner with my husband. I said to him, ‘There is something happening to me. I don’t know what it is.’ We came into the lounge and he put me onto the settee and he rang the ambulance.  Strangely I had no pain. The hospital is only about six miles away. I was taken there and they said I had a silent heart attack, where you have no pain or no warning.

The hospital did all sorts of tests. They discovered that my heart was skipping a beat. To be truthful, I had known for a long time that there was something not quite right. I would get out of breath even though I didn't drink or smoke.  Eventually they diagnosed me as having atrial fibrillation, which causes a fast and erratic heartbeat.

I was in a small ward in the hospital, not in Intensive Care.  It had six beds - three on one side and three on the other. I was lying back in my bed, in the middle of one of the nights.  The lights were on, as they always are in a hospital. I could see every other bed and I could see the nurses, station. 

Suddenly I was in this tunnel. The tunnel was coloured blue.  It was a nice blue. There was nothing else in it. It was just plain. It was like going through the tunnel from Liverpool to Ellesmere Port, which we use all the time. It was like that but had a light-blue colour instead.  I saw Maureen - my sister that died  - running up this brightly-lit tunnel. I was running after her. It was my real self.  It wasn't that I could just see myself as in a dream. It was really me who was doing the running. She wasn’t very far ahead of me although she wasn’t near enough for me to touch. I was shouting, ‘Maureen!  Wait for me!’  She hadn’t run in years - she was the eldest of us. I kept running after her. I continued to shout, 'Maureen! Maureen! 'Wait!'

She was dressed in her ordinary clothes and she looked the same age as she was when she died. She never said anything.  She just kept waving her hand back at me as if to tell me to go away. She faintly looked back once but it was mostly her hand that she was waving. I can still see her doing it now.  She was running towards a light at the end of this tunnel.  The light was at the other side of the ward. It was really bright, like a very nice sunny day. I don't know if she ever made it to the light. I certainly didn't because I suddenly woke up with a shock. My heart was pounding.

She was gone. The tunnel disappeared. It all just went. The whole thing had lasted for probably about a minute.  I woke up crying and I was upset. I realised immediately that the tunnel was gone. I saw that the tunnel had been a little bit to the right of me, between my bed and the opposite wall. There was actually a bed where it was. I saw that when I came to and focused.

I was very upset for weeks after. I was demented thinking about it. I couldn't figure out what had happened and why my sister had been running away. I couldn't understand why she didn't wait for me. I was disappointed because she didn't stop.  I wanted to follow her and go to the light. 

I never told the doctors. However, I did tell several people, including my family and some just laughed. They said, 'It was the medication you were on.' I also told a priest, who was a friend of mine, and he said,  'That was God telling your sister to tell you he didn't want you yet.' He said, 'God obviously has plenty of good work for you to do.'

Initially I thought it was a dream but I have thought since that maybe I was dying. Yet I still don't know what it was. I have read about similar things in books and laughed. I thought people only imagined things like that. It frightened me in a way but not as much as I’d expect it to frighten me. It also brought back my sister’s death. Mind you, I’m glad my sister didn't wait for me. And I know now that I will definitely meet her again.