The Christmas Miracle

This novella is a fictional account of one person's search for God, for love, as he arrives at the final moment of his life.Calvin is a middle aged husband and father dying of cancer. He is spending his last days in a hospice. The book examines his last day of life, Christmas Eve into Christmas Day. Amid the pain and suffering, Calvin experiences a recurring dream in which he is searching for truth, attempting to fill in a scroll with words of truth. In an imaginary dream town, he tries various means to uncover the truth, without success. Finally, in the late afternoon of Christmas Eve, he finds himself standing in line in an alley of the town. He converses with several people--a smoker, a knitter, a professor, and a little bald man. As they wait for the end of the line, they try to figure out what the line is for. Their conversation takes a religious turn, and the professor tries to convince everyone that Christianity is nonsense. He is skeptical and secular. The little bald man tries to counter the professor's arguments, generally without success. As the line proceeds outside of town into a hilly environment, and as darkness falls and fog envelops them, they cease their conversations. Calvin is alone with his thoughts. He is not sure why he is in the line, where it is taking him. Eventually, at dawn, he comes to a hill on which is a ladder. Unsure why, for what purpose, he scales it anyway, and arrives at a long wooden horizontal post with a hammer and nails. There are notes hammered to the wood. Calvin reads them. They are confessions of error, pain, suffering, and sin--to whom is unclear. Meanwhile Calvin, in the hospice, goes in and out of sleep. He is experiencing horrible pain, and knows he is close to death. The dream intrigues him. As he grows closer and closer to the end, the dream reaches a culmination as well.