The Clarinet Player

Near Port Orchard, WA         Early 1980s

My very best friend had lost his father to a heart attack, completely without warning.  The shock was great not only to his family, but to our neighborhood and all who knew him.  About a week after his father's death, I spent the night at his house.  We did the normal things that kids do at sleep-overs - watched movies, played games, tried to see who could stay up the latest.  It was during this last little game that the strangest thing I have ever seen occurred.  You see, my friend's father loved to play the clarinet, when he wasn't too busy advising us on life's ins and outs.  And his favorite song of all time was the Pink Panther Theme.   Well, while we were busy trying to stay awake as late as possible, we were distracted by a slight glow coming from his mother's bedroom, which was just across the living room from where we'd set up camp.  I figured it was just a television or something, until I realized that the only TV they had in the house was the one in front of us, in the living room.  Then we heard the music, soft and clear.  It was unmistakably the sound of someone playing a clarinet, and after three or four notes, we realized to our total amazement what the song was - the Pink Panther theme.  We looked at each other, then back again at the doorway to the bedroom, and listened as the song played through, fading away at the final notes as the glow subsided.  We were in shock - we had no clue what we had just witnessed, but it filled us with a strange combination of awe, fear, and - strangely enough - love.  After finally convincing ourselves to go to sleep, that we hadn't seen what we thought we had, we asked his mother about it in the morning.  She smiled a knowing smile, but said that it was nothing, that we must have imagined it - she laughed hesitantly, "It's not as though your father came back to say goodbye!"

Source:
Cliff Gilley