He got worse, and one day the nurse set up the alarm that my father had died.
Nurses, the doctor, everyone crowded around his bed to try and save him. They were successful, but my father said later that it had nothing to do with what the doctors did.
He was on a steep, dark slope with a light at the top. Standing in the light, my father could see the silhouette of his mother, who had died twenty years before.
My father was close to his mother, and was happy to see her. He greeted her joyfully, but she pushed him back.
"It isn't your time," she told him.
"But, I want to stay here, with you," my father protested.
My grandmother shook her head. "It isn't time yet, Bill."
My father argued with her, but she remained adamant, and he finally left her for the surroundings of the hospital.
He lived another eight years, then entered Long Beach again. Three times that summer, then finally on the first day of school he died.
I wonder if my grandmother kept her promise, or if it was just my father's
own mind creating this story for him.