A 21-Year Old Mystery

This entry is a long and rambling one, even by my standards. My apologies to you all, hopefully you'll be able to stick with it. It concerns something that actually happened twenty-one years ago today, but I still remember it as if it were yesterday, and I think I always will. I've not told many people about it, because I just don't think they'd understand, but here I feel safe enough to talk about it freely.

21 years ago, in January 1988, I was fourteen years old, and looking through my 1988 diary I was busy doing the sort of things teenagers did at the time - swapping (and copying) music cassettes and computer software with my friends (years before filesharing, we must have cost the music and software industries thousands back then) doing my schoolwork, and thinking about the girls who were at school with me - "I've decided to go for it and ask Linda to go out to the cinema with me", which was followed by "Linda says she can't come out with me on Saturday"...ah well, better luck next time eh? The entry for Wednesday, January 20 read "I didn't go to school today - I was ill" but there was a whole lot more to it than that.

During the mid 1980s I was of course in the middle of the bittersweet time that is puberty. Remember those days when you're on an emotional rollercoaster, and getting undressed for bed was a new experience almost every night? I was very aware of my changing body - and mind. That I was growing up, slowly becoming a man, leaving childhood behind - permanently. It was a real reminder to myself that time moves on, and people grow up....they get older....and they die.

It seems silly now - it did to me then too - but I was really scared of dying. I suppose I still am a little, though as I got older I became more sensible and accepting of the reality. Nowadays it's a spur to enjoy my life and try to seize the moment, because I know I only have a certain amount of them. It's also a call to help my friends, and others, in any way I can - because we're all in this together. Back then, though, it was different. Even though I was only 14 and probably had many decades to live, I still was freaked out by it. What was the point of living if it had to end someday? And then what? I started to get panic attacks over it. I'd really let rip when I was alone, but always managed to keep a lid on things when I was at school or with my family. I didn't want anyone else to know about it.

The winter of 1987/88 was the first one I remember when I found myself getting really down and depressed during it. Another diary entry read "Am getting sick of this. I hate this winter, I'll be glad when it's spring. Nothing happened today, dead boring." Sadly, I've had dark thoughts every winter since, but some years have been better than others, sometimes much better. This was the first one though, and they say the first of everything is the worst. Although excited about the year ahead (I'd been invited to a New Year party which was fantastic - lasted virtually all night) I suppose the fact the year had changed from '87 to '88 was another reminder that time was moving on...and the thoughts about dying came back to me - and so did the panic attacks.

On January 19 I had two of them in school (which I managed to keep a lid on) - one during, ironically enough, Religious Studies. We were doing a book in class at that time, sadly I can't remember the title ("Beyond The Cross And The Switchblade" springs to mind but I couldn't be certain) but there was a line in it concering dying - "That's something we all have to face" and that was reverberating around my head as I went to bed that night. "You're gonna die...and that's it...for ever! You could even go to sleep and not wake up...that's scary. It would be like you never lived at all...no, get a grip on yourself. Maybe the school chaplain's right - and if you're good, you'll go to heaven and be there for ever...and ever...and ever - stop, this isn't helping at all!"

I think I was trying to wrap my young mind around the subject of eternity, and it just couldn't cope. Years later I would go on to read mathematics at university, and learn about several famous mathematicians who grappled with the concept of infinity. Some went insane, and I think I can tell why - maybe it's just not something our brains can handle.

The following morning, as I was eating breakfast cereal watching TV, I had another attack - and this time it was serious. I ran into the kitchen where my Mum was, and she obviously knew something was wrong. I didn't want to tell her, but now I had no choice. "Mum - someday I'm going to die...and I don't want to" I said, and then the dam really broke. "I don't want to die!" I cried as the tears came down my face. Mum did what she could to reassure me, telling me it was all right and I wasn't going to die for a long long time yet, but it wasn't cutting any ice with me. Eventually, she told me to go back to bed and try and sleep for a bit. I would feel better after that, and she'd call the school and tell them I was feeling sick or something.

I lay in my bed, still feeling pretty distressed about it all, looking out at the view from my bedroom window. It was an overcast day, and the grey clouds were rolling across the sky above the wood outside our house. And then it happened. And I know this may sound hard to believe, but I swear on my mother's life that this is what I saw.

The clouds stopped moving. Totally. And I saw what looked like another white cloud rising upwards over the wood. Then I looked closer at it - it seemed to be in the shape of an angel. With wings and a halo and everything. It slowly moved up into the sky, towards a break in the cloud cover. Slowly and silently it moved through the break in the clouds until I couldn't see it anymore. Then when it was gone, the clouds started moving again, rolling across the sky like nothing had happened. "What the hell was that?" I thought. Then I noticed I was feeling a lot more peaceful and chilled. I didn't feel distressed anymore. I snuggled up under the blankets and slept for a couple of hours, and when I woke up I felt much better.

To this day I'm not sure what I saw on that morning in 1988. Was it really an angel, telling me I'd be alright and that I was being watched over? Was it a sign from the hereafter telling me death really isn't the end? Was it simply a hallucination generated from my brain as a way to calm down my incredibly distressed mind? The truth is I do not know. I'm not sure I'll ever know.

I'm not exactly a spiritual person - religion is a big and emotive subject and I'm not going to go on about it here, except to say I feel everyone has to work out what they believe by themselves. I guess I've always been agnostic, then and now. But my logical mind believes that there are many things in the universe that we as a species simply do not understand and cannot explain. As history goes on and our collective knowledge base gets broader, we can explain more and more - but there's always some things that defy rational explanation, at least at the time they happen. Perhaps, years from now, when my time finally does come, what happened on January 20, 1988 will be explained to me. Perhaps that's the deal. Maybe then it will all make sense. And I can live with that.

ROBBIE WILLIAMS - ANGELS
(from the album "Life Thru A Lens", 1997)