爱华网系列专题：《点亮生活的智慧：人生之钥》
It transpired that she’d been to a seance. A male voice had sought her out, telling her, tenderly, how much he loved her, how he wished to see her happy, and how he was always watching over her. “It was my father,” she whispered tearfully. “The father I never knew. He was killed in the war, when I was a baby.”
I reacted with a certain scepticism: “Do you really believe there’s such a thing as spirits?” “Who knows?” she smiled, unperturbed. “The thing is, it made me realise that he would have felt just like that. And, although he’s gone, I still have his love. It is contained within me. I just wasn’t aware of it before.” The woman I knew had been transformed. She stood before me radiant, secure in the knowledge that she was lovable and loved. Looking at her, I could tell that the person she had suddenly become had a rosy future ahead of her. That moment was a turning-point for me, too. For, just like her, I had a father who died when I was a baby. My son used to have a black-and-white pet rabbit who amazed us all. He was fully house-trained, answered to his name; he played with dinky toys and went cycling in a basket on the handle-bars. He liked watching the early evening news, sitting on the sofa with the rest of us, occasionally operating the remote control with his hind paw, or sipping tea from my mug when I wasn’t looking. The rabbit was so much part of our life, we couldn’t imagine it without him scuttling around the house. After two years he was struck down with “flu”. The nasty kind that few rabbits survive. I rang the vet, who promised to come: a sixty mile round-trip for our precious pet. While waiting, I took the rabbit on my lap to try and syringe some water into him. Weak, but peaceful, he lay on his side in what seemed an unnatural position. He placed his head comfortably on my arm and gave me a curious glance: not like a rabbit at all. Later I realized it was an acknowledgement: of my presence, my care, and my love for him. For at that moment I had a rare sensation of love in its purest, most unadulterated form: love stripped of all self-interest, existing only as a mystic force. I felt it reaching out from me, enveloping the tiny body on my lap like a protective mantle, holding him as gently as my arms, while he breathed his last. I shall never forget the rabbit or the feeling he, like any living thing, was able to inspire.
