Observations placeholder
He suddenly began to cry uncontrollably and was consumed with grief
Identifier
021449
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
The Art of Dying – Drs Peter and Elizabeth Fenwick
When we were students at Bristol in the late I950s my fiance was estranged from his mother, who was a doctor in Nigeria, and he was living with his father. Around New Year we were both attending a dinner party at my parents' house when he suddenly began to cry uncontrollably and was consumed with grief. He went out to the kitchen to wash dishes, trying to give himself something to divert his mind, but nothing worked and eventually he gave up and drove back to his father's house where he was met by a policeman who told him that his mother had been killed that evening as she returned to London Airport for a plane back to Nigeria (though he didn't even realize that she was travelling that day in her car). He was not at all an emotional man, quite the opposite, and this strange episode has remained as one of the most inexplicable episodes of my life.