Saving Elijah

has been coming to me at night in a dream. In the dream, he is swimming in clear blue water that shimmers with a brilliant light. He is swimming as if he has sprouted fins and gills, and breathing underwater, as if water were air, or music.
    "Look, Mommy, I can swim good now!"
    He does an expert breast stroke, maneuvering easily and gracefully beside a tall stag horn coral, above a swimming turtle. He is buoyant in the water, weightless and free and unafraid.
    "No, Elijah! Don't go! Stay with me!"
    He stops swimming, and turns to look at me. He stays very still, floating upright, kicking his strong little legs, treading water. Keeping his distance.
    "I won't drown, Mommy. Look!"
    He flips himself over in the water, and does a little dance. Such agility, he is dazzling. I watch, amazed, as he swims away, and disappears into the light. He never looks back.
    I open my eyes now in the hospital room, and I see him the way he is. I begin to weep, and I repeat the words of a psalm:

    I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains.
From whence shall my help come?
My help comethfrom the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth ...

    I weep and I wail, and I thank God for the miracle of Elijah's life. A miracle very brief is still a miracle. God comes into me and fills me with the sights and sounds of another place, a future I could not before have conceived; to light a candle year after year, and have this simple ritual help me go on.

    *    *    *

    A room filled with flickering light, the brilliance of fire, the warmth. Alex comes down from his room for the candlelighting. He's left his music blasting upstairs, but he's come.
    "Do you want to say something, Kate?" Sam asks.
    Kate lowers her eyes, and her pale lashes rest as lightly as moth wings on her cheeks. "We love you, Elijah," she says softly. "Always."
    "Alex?"
    Our son looks back and forth from Sam to me, his tear-bright eyes flickering in the candlelight. He shrugs.
    Sam touches Alex's cheek. "Yes, we love you, Elijah," he says.
    I am thinking: This is all I can give you now, Elijah. A lit candle. Just a symbol, and it isn't much. It isn't anything like life. But it's all I have to give. And it is the best I can do.
    Then I read the words of an ancient prayer, one that wisely celebrates life even in the face of death.
    My family stands in silence for a few moments, then Alex says, "I gotta go. I have homework, I have to get up early in the morning."
    "Go on, honey," Sam says.
    Both of our children give each of us a hug and a kiss, then Alex and Kate go upstairs to their rooms.
    "Sleep well, my children," I whisper. "See you in the morning."
    How do you go on thinking this, whispering this in the night, when you know that it's entirely possible it might not be true? You do. You make the choice to find the way.

    *    *    *

    Now, in the hospital room where I believe Death is waiting patiently, I hold my husband's hand, and I stand over my son's bed. I close my eyes again, and I am filled with an awesome presence, with light and faith and love.
    I do not need to understand to accept, just as I don't need proof to believe. Time has passed, and the demon has never returned to haunt me. Sometimes I ask myself if it was real: Did I bring it into existence, a being composed wholly of the darkest part of my soul, and then make it disappear forever? Or does it always exist as a formless spirit that chose me, used me once, took form through me, and may at some point choose another? These are questions for which I have no answers.
    I tell myself that since Elijah saw it, too, it must have been real, but as Sam has pointed out, perhaps he only said what he thought I, his mommy, wanted to hear. It wasn't like that, I've told Sam, which of course he already knows. Whatever its origin, the experience has healed some things in me that badly needed healing, and helped me know that my son's illness has nothing to do with anything I've done or not done.
    And this, too, I know: I have looked into my soul, and I will do now what I believe is right. I cannot be certain that my experience has been given to me as a kind of gift from a loving, caring God, and that my hand continues to be so guided. But I can surely hope. I do hope.
    I open my eyes, and together Sam and I reach out to an electrical switch. We will let our son Elijah go.

acknowledgements
    I am humbly grateful to Laura Mathews and Joni Evans, for believing, and for patience and guidance. Thanks to Rabbi David Wolfman, Rabbi