Do not go gentle into that good night.

Stephen rose from where he was sitting. The words that had plagued him all day still echoed in his mind. As hard as he had tried, he was unable to rid his mind of them. Yes, there had been many times when he thought of the poem, but never to the extent he was just then. What did it all mean?

He just couldn’t understand it. Over the years, especially as Stephen grew older, he was now in his 60s, he found that certain things like music, classical music in particular, would come to his mind first thing in the morning when he woke up. He would invariably have a tune playing in his mind and over the years he had tried to make sense of those pieces of music but had failed. It was only in the past ten years or so, but more strongly in the last three years, that he found that there was in fact a logic to the music he heard. Invariably the music was either something that one of his parents had enjoyed, or a piece that he himself thought of as a favourite. But it was the music that played on the radio when he first got into the car that seemed the most meaningful.

There had been many occasions when, pulling out of his garage, he turned on the radio and heard either his mother’s or his father’s favourite piece. It became disappointing when instead he heard a random piece of baroque music, which would no doubt have made his parents cringe, Stephen too for that matter.

At first, Stephen would listen to the music for the sheer enjoyment, but that had been taken to another level one day when while driving his car he thought about an incident involving  his father when he was a young child, and then the piece of music that came on next, was in fact a link to that experience.

Over the years Stephen had managed to formulate a theory and it was this. If on any given day he did something that would’ve pleased his mother then a few minutes after the incident he would hear a piece of music that was one of his mother’s favourites, and the same went for his father. However, conversely, if Stephen did something that neither parent would have approved of, then the remainder of the day became frustrating and none of the classical music stations played any favourable music. Sometimes when Stephen got into his car the first thing in the morning, the music that came on served as a warning from one of his parents for his potential bad behaviour. Over the years Stephen developed a sense as to which was being played as a warning and what had been played as an endorsement or approval.

The day that Stephen’s mind picked up and then replayed the first line of the poem appeared to be a day just like any other. Stephen woke up the same time he did every day of the week, which was at six, and the rest of the day until teatime, which was 4:30 by decree, was perfectly normal. It was later that things began to become a little peculiar. After tea, Stephen, who lived alone, wondered what he was in the mood to eat for dinner. It was a beautifully warm summer’s day and as he sat on the deck of his beach house finishing up the last bit of writing for the day, he happened to look up, which he did occasionally during the day especially when he heard children on the beach screaming with delight which was generally accompanied by an equally excited dog, and found that even though he could hear the children on the beach he couldn’t see them. He smiled to himself thinking that the children had either left his view or hadn’t come into it yet, so he went back to his writing. Stephen lived by a creed when it came to his writing. He had to write four pages a day, whether it took him one hour or ten. He did not allow himself to bend that rule even though sometimes it was extremely tempting. Especially when all that came to his mind was junk. Well Stephen would write down the junk, and yes it would be four pages of junk, but the goal was four pages, not its content. Most of the time though, it happened to be four pages in the book he was currently writing. What a relief to his readers!

This day however was one of those days when even four pages of junk was difficult to write. He had written three and was struggling with his last page. He closed his eyes and toyed with the idea of filling the last page with a repetition of the alphabet, but decided that was being infantile. He heard the children again. Their screams of excitement punctuated by the bark of delight from a dog, but again when he opened his eyes there was no one on the beach, it was empty. This time Stephen got up from his cane chair and walked out to the end of his deck from where he could see up and down the beach for miles. He was surprised that he couldn’t see anyone, but the sound of the children and the dog had ended and so he walked back to his chair and sat down again. He picked up his pen and pad. He always wrote in long hand and was one of those writers that believed that writing using pen and paper gave him a sense of connection to the story, which he couldn’t get by typing, plus he was an awful typist. His eyes remained glued to the last words he had written. He realised that they were in fact the words that had been playing in his mind all day. They just didn’t fit into what he had written earlier which was really gibberish. He put his pen down and read the words to himself and then looked up at the beach which appeared empty, but for some unknown reason Stephen believed that this time there were in fact people there though he could not see them. He looked down at his pad again and re-read the last line once again, but this time he read it out aloud to himself again and again and again and each time he did, the beach in front of his house began to fill with people. First, there were people he knew from his childhood. Then some of his relatives, and then he saw his sister and brother who waved to him. And then there was his German Shepherd, Lucky, and finally onto the scene came his parents. They looked up at him and smiled. His mother indicated she wanted him to join them, and so Stephen immediately got up from his chair and ran down the steps onto the beach. He threw his arms wide open to hug his parents and brother and sister. How good it felt. So good to feel their arms around him. He kissed them on their cheeks with tears flowing freely, and then it suddenly occurred to him the meaning of the words which had haunted him all day long. They were from a poem written by Dylan Thomas, “Do not go gentle into that good night,” except he had altered them to suit his purpose. The last line he ever wrote on his pad was, “I shall not go softly into that good night,” and he did not.