Go Toward the Light (1988 TV Movie)

Linda Hamilton: Claire Madison

Photos 

Quotes 

• Greg Madison : When you're born, your spirit slips into your body like a glove. It's your spirit that moves your body and gives you your thoughts and feelings. Look here.

  [Greg waves his hand] 

  Greg Madison : Here's your spirit and when you're born, your spirit slips into your body like that.

  [Greg slips his hand into a glove] 

  Greg Madison : And then for your whole life long, your spirit and your body act as one. Now, when the time comes for the spirit to leave this world, when you die, your spirit slips out of your body the same way.

  [Greg takes the glove off and wiggles his hand] 

  Greg Madison : And even though the body dies, the spirit lives forever.

  Ben Madison : You mean, my body is like a glove?

  Greg Madison : Yes.

  Ben Madison : And my spirit goes to heaven?

  Claire : That's right, Ben

  Ben Madison : Am I gonna die, Mom?

  Claire : Yes, Ben, you are... We all are, but your time may come sooner than ours.

• Claire : Most people see life as straight line and the longer the line, the more we think we have lived and the more whole we suppose our lives to be. But I learned from Ben, life is a circle... Ben died on July 4th 1986, a few days after his ninth birthday, a brief one-hundred-and-eight months after he was born. It's the hardest thing anyone could ever have to do, to help someone they love die. But we, as parents, had to help Ben face death; without pain, without fear and, ultimately, without us. Ben's line was short but his circle had no beginning and no end...

• Claire : It's the hardest thing anyone could ever have to do, to help someone that they love die.

• Claire : Already, I was developing a strategy of dividing life into small, manageable portions, milestones by which we would later measure Ben's life.

• Claire : Sally, can I ask you something? You've been around so many dying children... what is it like for them?

  Sally : [sighs]  Well, when they first begin the death experience... they go into a kind of trance. They're not unconscious but it's like they're only half here. They most always talk about seeing a light, usually it's at the end of a long tunnel, and they want to go towards it. But a lot of times they're torn; between going and leaving the ones that they love behind. But when they do finally let go... a look of tremendous peace comes over them... Like they're released...

• Claire : [watching the terminally-ill Ben hold newborn Danny]  I'll never forget how the two of them looked that day, as if time had stopped for one brief second while they criss-crossed each other's paths. Danny, just entering this new experience... Ben, growing toward the next. My heart took a picture.

• Claire : [as Ben is dying]  The veil is getting very thin. Can you see the light? Go towards the light, Ben. Go towards the light.