The Doorbell

One year my neighbor down the street got cancer. For a while he stayed at home, on chemo, and got sicker and sicker. I brought him a meal every day, and stayed to talk with him when I dropped off the food. Over several months we got quite close. He didn’t have any kids, and his wife of many years had died, so he liked my company. Finally he went to a local nursing home, and I went there several times a week to be beaten by him at checkers. (He was an incredible player, and whomped me no matter how hard I tried.) After we played he usually talked some more. One day he told me some extremely personal things about his life. The next day when I went back, he was in a coma. I held his hand for a while and left. That night, at 4 in the morning, the doorbell of the house where I was living rang so loudly that I jumped out of bed. But then I remembered — the house where I was living didn’t have a doorbell, people just knocked. So I knew I had only heard the doorbell in a dream. I wondered, was the doorbell a message from my friend? I went back to sleep, and when I woke up the next morning I called the nursing home. When I asked how he was, the nurse said, “I’m sorry, he died last night.” When I asked when it was that he had died, she said, “Four this morning.” Somehow he had rung a doorbell that didn’t exist!

Mary P.

Joan comments: People often seem to get messages from someone they know well when they die. This certainly sounds like such a case. One interesting thing is it sounds like your friend did what is called a “life review” the day before he went into his final coma. People frequently need to tell someone their secrets when death is near. Thanks for sharing.