I Saw the light but There was no one Waiting

By Lea LaRuffa

The truth is sometimes the hardest thing to accept.

This is a self-help guide to living and dying, written by an 8 year old girl; a cancer victim. Who’d decided to share her life experience in the hospital,waiting to die. Knowing she will die. And all along thinking of her

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lea LaRuffa
• Release date: May 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9780994588371

Book preview

My name is Elyse, and I am 8 years old. I’ve been sick all my life, and have died 60 times, so far. I have decided to write this diary, so I can remember things that happened when I die, and so Mommy will know where I go when I die. So she can remember me.

Every time I die, Mommy says I don’t have to come back. Mommy says, see the light and look for Nana; she will take care of you. She will be waiting for you. But every time I die, I see the light, but there is no one waiting for me, no One. I am not afraid, not really, but I don’t know what’s behind the light, and if there is anything behind the light. So I keep coming back to Mommy. If I grow up a little more, maybe I won’t be so afraid, and will go in to the light and stay there. But for now, I think I am safer with Mommy.

Mommy doesn’t know that all those times I died; a Sparrow came to guide me to the light. He is a very smart Sparrow, he talks and has glitter on his wings, and when he flies by my side the glitter flies in my face. That is why I always have gold sprinkles on my face when I come back. When we get to the light, we stand there looking at it, and looking at each other. It is like the sun, but it doesn’t hurt your eyes. The Sparrow whose name is Eli always tells me to go through the light to see Nana. But I am too scared. What Mommy doesn’t know, is each time I die, and I do not go in to the light, I get to go to another place, a place, where I am healthy; a place where I can be a grownup, or a little girl, a place which gives me the choice to stay there, or to come back to Mommy. I have made so many friends in all these places, that one day, if I die, I might choose one of these worlds to go to, instead of going into the light.

After I spent some time in this other place, Eli and I return back to the hospital bed, and I wake up again.

I used to be scared of dying. But after you die so many times, you don’t get scared any more. It is normal for me to die. You see I have a bad heart, and bad lungs, and bad kidneys, and a lot of other stuff in my body is bad. I have cancer as well that keeps growing also. Nothing works like it is supposed to. So since I was a baby, I have lived in the hospital. I have my own room, called the Elyse quarters. Because I have been here for so long; I have my own bed, and my own toys, and my own TV, and my own clothes. Because I never ever, ever, get to go outside, I can only see the world from my window. And everyone who comes to see me has to wear a certain gown, so I don’t breathe in their germs.

They try to make me feel special here in the hospital. But I really wish I was like everyone else. So until someone can invent a medicine to fix me, I will have to live in the hospital until I die. And I hear the Doctors and the Nurses all the time. And all they say is that I should have died when I was little.

No one knows I go to the other places. And I am sure, if they did, they would tell me all these places were in my mind. Or they would tell me that my mind is bad like the rest of me.

So for now, the trips I take when I die are only with Eli, the Sparrow.

Yesterday I died again, number 62, they told me. I remembered going to the dragonfly lady’s place. It is a place with people who are like dragonflies. They have beautiful wings that look like glass, and they can walk, and they can fly, and they can float on the water. Everything is strange. But the dragonfly people are nice to me, and they play with me, and they read me stories. Sometimes, I don’t understand what they are talking about, but sometimes, when I do, they make me feel good. They eat sticky food most of the time, which tastes like honey to me. I am not supposed to eat honey, when I am in the hospital. But here, no one tells me what to do; they just let me, be me.

I think this time; I died for a long, long, time. I spent a long time with the dragonfly people, that is how I know. And when I woke up again in the hospital, Mommy looked really scared. I think, she thought I wasn’t coming back again. I think she thought I went to the light. I never did tell her, that when I see the light, there is no one there waiting for me. So either Mommy was given the wrong information, or she really doesn’t know what happens when you die.

Today I have to go for more tests. They think something is growing in my head now; something not good. So when I come back from the tests, I will be able to watch TV for a while, until Mommy speaks with the Doctor, and he tells her what I have. The