I didn’t realize I was dead until I heard my mother crying.

I felt like someone  just snapped their fingers and I awakened from a hypnotist’s trance.  I took in my surroundings, saw that I was in a hospital room and more importantly, I was in a hospital bed.

The weird thing was, I was standing by the door.

My mom was resting her head on my chest, her cries ripping at my heart, my stepdad Dave was holding my hand and wiping away a tear himself while my little sister Lucy, who was 12, stood at the foot of the bed, her face a mask of shock.

“He can’t be gone, ’I heard my mom say over and over until it finally sunk in.

I was dead.  Dead at 19, my whole future now an abyss of absolute nothingness.
For some reason it took me a while to figure out what had happened.

I knew I had come home from college for the weekend, it was a Saturday morning and Mom always made me pancakes for breakfast and this morning we were out of syrup.

I’d volunteered to go to the store,to get some and after that the last thing I remembered was stopping at a red light. Nothing else.

From the looks of things it appeared I’d been in an accident.  One side of my face was completely swollen and I had a huge gash across my forehead.

‘The doctors did everything they could Mary, ’Dave said, his words of comfort falling on deaf ears as Mom continued sobbing.

So this was it.  Toby Clarke, dead at 19.





I had a closed casket funeral.  Mom insisted on it and Dave delivered the eulogy.  He spoke of how proud he was to have had a chance to be my father after my...