“Yes,” she answered, in a voice so low I could but hear it. “That I was happy when—I fell asleep.”
I pulled off my jacket.
“I’m wanting to hear you say your prayers, Davy,” she said, “before you go to sleep. I’m wanting once again—just once again—to hear you say your prayers.”
I knelt beside the bed.
“My little son!” my mother said. “My—little—son!”
“My mother!” I responded, looking up.
She lifted my right hand. “Dear Jesus, lover of children,” she prayed, “take, oh, take this little hand!”
And I began to say my prayers, while my mother’s fingers wandered tenderly through my curls, but I was a tired child, and fell asleep as I prayed. And when I awoke, my mother’s hand lay still and strangely heavy on my head.
Then the child that was I knew that his mother was dead. He leaped from his knees with a broken cry, and stood expectant, but yet in awe, searching the dim, breathless room for a beatified figure, white-robed, winged, radiant, like the angel of the picture by his bed, for he believed that souls thus took their flight; but he saw only shadows.