Vigils

 

I’ve seen hundreds of vigils in my time

Perhaps even a thousand .

One sticks in my mind more than any other and it was in Sheffield in the 1990s 

It was with a young man in his twenties. 

A slight, Bonny lad with pink cheeks and brown hair. 

He was unconscious and sadly brain dead and he had a mother and many brothers who were sitting with him in shifts.

I was working nights and it was very dark and very cold  as Sheffield winters often are,

And he was in a dark side room with his mother who was sat in a chair and a younger brother who was asleep on a mattress on the floor. 

Now, because the mother hadn’t slept, one of the sons had fashioned a paper shade cover over each lens of her spare glasses, so by slipping them on she could effectively shut out the light of my inquiring pen torch when I came to assess her son in the middle of the night.

What we hadn’t factored in however was the youngest son’s sense of humour ,as unbeknownst to all, he had drawn two massive staring eyes on the paper with a felt pen. So when I shone my pen torch over at the woman in the chair, two massive bloodshot eyes were staring out at me in the dark!!!

My scream and subsequent swearing woke mother and son, and most of the ward up