A Week of Darkness
December 2017 was a month carved into my memory - not for lights or celebration, but for loss, survival, and something I still can't explain.
It began with one of the darkest shocks I've ever received. On Sunday, December 3rd, one of my closest friends took his own life. He hanged himself. The news broke on the 4th. Everything stopped. But there was no time to process or mourn - because that same week, my mother was suddenly hospitalized with what turned out to be a severe septic infection. She was barely hanging on.
No Time to Grieve
In those critical days, my focus shifted entirely to my mom and my younger siblings. She was fighting for her life, and I had to hold the family together. I never made it to my friend’s funeral, which took place that Friday. I remember feeling torn - split between two impossible places. Guilt sat on my shoulders, quietly, as I sat by my mother’s bedside.
A Midnight Encounter
That night - the night of the funeral - something happened that still haunts me, but not in a frightening way. It happened late, near midnight. My brother and I were in the hospital’s visitor lounge, tired and worn, stepping in and out to smoke. At some point, my brother went out, and I stayed behind. That’s when an elderly man quietly sat down at my table.
He must’ve been in his 80s. There was nothing alarming about him. He was polite. Calm. But something felt… off. Not threatening - just unusual. As we talked, I began to notice little things. When I asked him a question he had just answered, not to challenge him but to clarify, his tone shifted. It was like he had been caught in a lie - or maybe in something that wasn’t meant to be questioned. I instinctively backed off, changed the subject to save him the discomfort. He reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t quite place it.
He told me he was visiting a friend. Odd, since it was close to midnight and most patients were asleep. But I didn’t push. He stood up, wished me good night, and walked past the nurses’ station - heading in the wrong direction. I watched him go, thinking he’d turn around or be stopped. But the nurses didn’t even look up. Normally, they always greeted us with a glance or a smile. This time, it was like they didn’t see him at all.
The Realization
An hour or two later, we drove home through icy roads, taking it slow. I had borrowed an unfamiliar Gary Moore EP from my mom and played it in the car. I was exhausted. I thought no more of it until I got home.
That’s when it hit me. The man I’d spoken to - the man with the strange presence, the odd turns of phrase, and the vanishing exit - he looked exactly like my friend who had died earlier that week. But aged. As if time had passed only for him. He was older, changed, but I knew it in my bones.
My body froze. The hair on the back of my neck rose. I was sure - he came to see me. To make sure I was okay. To say goodbye, in his own way.
Something Beyond Words
Since then, I’ve carried that encounter with quiet reverence. I’ve never spoken about it much. But it changed something in me. Not my beliefs necessarily, but my sense of the world. Of timing. Of presence. And absence. That night, grief and grace shared a table in a hospital lounge.
Maybe it was my mind trying to make sense of loss. Or maybe, just maybe, there are things we don’t fully understand - moments when love crosses barriers we don’t see.
Whatever it was, I’ll never forget the night a ghost sat beside me.