David Morrell: Fireflies: A Father's Classic Tale of Love and Loss

That was where the second mystical experience took place. Donna and Sarie had been going through their own emotional strain, sustained by relatives who helped them to the church. At nine o’clock on a beautiful dusky June night, the family had entered the church. There were arrangements to be made, a funeral to be planned. In the end the music the group selected was “Pie Jesu (Merciful Jesus),” from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sad sublime Requiem, which he had written in honor of his dead father.

Stooped, barely able to maintain his balance if not for the supporting hands of his two friends, David had managed to enter the shadowy church. As he shuffled up the main aisle, his unsteady footsteps echoing off pews and rafters, his tear-reddened nostrils widening to the redolence of incense, flowers, and scented candles from that morning’s mass, an eerie change went through him. A strength of solace, of well-being and reassurance suddenly grew within him.

For a second time, he heard the echoing voice of the firefly. It rephrased its words from the night before in the bedroom. “I’m okay, Dad. I’m sorry you hurt, but your grief is the proof of your love for me. Mourn for your loss, but don’t mourn for me. Because you can’t imagine how happy I am.”

David abruptly straightened. He no longer needed his friends to hold him upright. With a strength that came from spiritual assurance, he approached the front of the church, where family and friends who watched him said afterward that he seemed different more than in manner, almost as if he had a glow.

He didn’t feel better. His grief was as agonizing as before. Nonetheless he stood straighter. He could function. For he knew beyond doubt that his son was at peace, or in the firefly’s word, “okay.”

That I can handle, David thought. I can manage to suffer. For myself. If my son sends a message he’s okay, I can strain through grief for myself.

Because I don’t matter.

That was the second experience.

And the third? Twelve people saw it. All were astonished. None ever forgot it. As a witness later said, “It’s getting harder to be an agnostic.”

This is what happened. When the funeral service concluded, David stood and put his arms around Donna and Sarie. Sobbing, struggling to muster dignity and not stumble or faint, they left the church, followed by several hundred mourners.

That Tuesday morning was hot and bright. Blinking after the shadows of the church, David, Donna, and Sarie sat in a limousine whose white seemed incongruous yet appropriate because innocence-though dead-did not merit black.

The mourners remained outside the church, in grieved confusion. Three relatives and two very close friends got into the limousine as well. The representative from the mortician brought Matthew’s urn, his photograph, and his guitar from the church. She set the urn on Donna’s lap, then drove the limousine from the church, followed by the priest.

After Donna held the urn for a while, she handed it to Sarie, and as the limousine neared the cemetery, Sarie handed the urn to David.

It was heavier than he had expected, not because of the ashes, which for a frail boy had to be slight, but because of the bronze-possibly fifteen pounds. It was square, a shiny deep brown, and by now someone had taped a lock of Matthew’s light brown hair to the top. On opposite sides of the urn, at the bottom, two screws secured the lid and what it contained.

Entering the curved gravel driveway of the cemetery, David noticed the groundskeeper, or what’s known as the sexton, standing at the open gate. The man (who, David later learned, had once been an economics major and had never dreamed he’d make a thirty-year career of overseeing a cemetery) got into his car and led the limousine past seemingly endless, flower-topped graves toward a mausoleum at the rear of the grounds.

The mausoleum (the only one on the property) was not at all like the dingy box-shaped structures you often see in cemeteries. Instead it was peaked, made mostly of light-colored wood and stone, and resembled a chapel. Its front door was open. As the sexton stopped his car ahead of the limousine, David, Donna, Sarie, and the others got out to join him. All told, counting the sexton and the representative from the mortician, there were ten now. Then the priest arrived, and another representative from the mortician, and there were twelve.

“I normally keep the mausoleum locked,” the sexton said, “but I wanted to ease your grief and avoid any awkwardness, opening the door and all that, so I could make this as smooth as possible for you. Later I’ll give you a key, so you can visit your son’s remains whenever you like.”

Stifled tears. A murmur of thanks.

So the procession of twelve, led by David carrying the heavier-than-expected urn, stepped into the mausoleum that resembled a chapel. Inside, on the right and left, there were niches for coffins and urns, but straight ahead were chairs like pews, and an organ and a podium. The large rear wall was glass from top to bottom, with sunlight pouring in. And David, who entered first, his tears dripping onto the urn, was the first to see…

What to call it?

A startling coincidence? A supernormal event?

What David saw was a bird. It flew around the chapel, soaring, swooping, circling, flapping in panic.

Recovering from his surprise, David turned to look past Donna and Sarie toward the priest, who followed through the open door.

David, who needed a respite from sorrow, a mitigation of grief, said with bitter irony, his humor black, “That’s all we need, Father. The Holy Ghost.”

But the priest stopped rigidly, reacting neither to irony nor to black humor. Indeed the expression on his face was a combination of shock, disbelief, and reverence. His face paled. “But, David, look closer! It really is a dove.”

That statement might not make sense to non-Catholics. In the Catholic Church, the Holy Ghost is a term that describes God’s ability to inspire as well as console, and traditionally the Holy Ghost is symbolized by a dove.

That’s what David-and the priest, and Donna, and Sarie, and the rest of the twelve-were seeing now. A dove. Not white, as in religious paintings. But gray, its name appropriate, a mourning dove, so-called because of its dirge-like “coo,” so much like a sob. It flapped and swooped and soared.

“My God,” the sexton said, not intending to sound religious. “I’m terribly sorry. I deeply apologize. I left the door open to make it easy for you to come in, but I should have thought. Sometimes a bird flies in if the door isn’t closed. I’ll try to get the dove out right now.”

David shook his head, his black irony irrepressible, and anyway the service was all that mattered.

“No, leave it,” he said, scanning the crypts to his right and left. “This place could use some life.”

The sexton narrowed his eyes. “You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.”

The sexton and the mortician’s representatives relaxed.

David found out later that an accidental interruption of the service, a distraction such as the dove, sometimes spurred mourners into fits of indignation, into accusations about insensitivity and incompetence.

Everybody’s different, he thought. In his own case, he welcomed the dove. In fact, in a strange way, he even loved it. For its life. Let it flap and swoop and soar. As long as it doesn’t hurt itself. When Matthew’s in his niche, we’ll take care of the dove.

The service began. As yet, there was nothing mystical, nothing supernormal about the dove. The door had for convenience been left open. The dove-as coincidence can happen-had by chance flown in. Perfectly explainable. Not usual, but nothing remarkable.

So far. But then coincidence was added to coincidence until, for David and the other eleven witnesses in the mausoleum’s chapel, the dove became very remarkable indeed.