In Xenosaga, both the video game and the anime, the protagonist always hears a certain sound before she has a vision of things past, present or future. This is a sound you may hear at certain times in your life. The irony is that it doesn't actually come through your ears.

It is like Elijah's still, small voice, just a whisper in the mind, but nevertheless you are always stunned when you hear it.

Another writer here on FA has talked about her experience of finding out her husband had passed away. Suddenly and unexpectedly.

I remember from high school two individuals who were stunned in the same way - the mother of one was the victim of a random and pointless murder, while the other was rammed by a drunken motorcyclist and, in attempting to regain control of his car, crushed two pedestrians.

I had a similar experience, that "weekend from hell" I mention earlier in my writing. Twice that weekend, really. Once Thursday night, when a friend called me to let us know that my then-fiancee's mentor had died; once Sunday morning, when my fiancee called me and spoke to me gently, telling me that my elder brother had been found dead. That was what she said, it was what my younger brother had said to her (and to me in a voicemail that I hadn't gotten). "Found dead" is a bit of an understatement, of course, but there's no polite way to say "a jogger discovered his shattered corpse near the bridge".

My mother, for her part, knew what had happened as soon as she saw the police officer coming up the front walk.

And all of these revelations - and hell if they don't seem to revolve a lot around death, eh? - can be accompanied by this still, small sound. It's like the sound of a pin dropping onto a crystal wineglass. It resonates in your mind, and although it is not loud, everything else in your environment fades into the background. It is the sound of the foundations of the universe crumbling beneath your feet.