Fly Our Boat through the Starlight River

The boat sailed through the starry sky and for whatever reason, my childhood dog Buddy was captaining it, his silvered snout sniffing the cool, evening air.

I came to slowly, staring at him. How long had he been gone?

Thirteen. The answer swam up from the depths of my mind. I was thirteen on that fateful day we drove to the vet, weeping as we wound up that lonely mountain road, ferrying the good old dog up our own River Styx.

“You’re alive?” I choked. My throat seemed to be full of sand.

Buddy slumped against the prow of the boat.

“No,” he sighed.

I peered over the edge to where two splintered oars glided through thin air. Distant city lights and black patches of wilderness unfolded beneath us like a vast blanket. The boat creaked, tilting upwards towards a glowing full moon. We seemed to be climbing higher into the sky.

“Am I…alive?” I couldn’t look at Buddy when I asked, but somehow could feel the old dog’s baleful gaze.

“No,” he said after a pause.

My hand dropped limply over the side of the boat. Cool air screamed through my fingers.

I had thought about being dead more often than I thought about being alive in the past eight months. A long, slow illness will do that to you: plenty of time to sit and to dwell and to dread while you willingly allow poison to course through your failing body – a desperate attempt to come out the other side more whole than broken.

A bitter edge crept into my voice.

“So that’s it?” I slammed my fist against the boat’s side. The vessel lurched, dipping towards the fading earth.

The old dog was unfazed.

“That’s it. I’m here to help with the crossing.”

He placed a paw on my knee, the rough paw pads scraping against my skin in a distantly familiar way. I laced my fingers through the golden ruffles of his fur.

“Have you been waiting for me this whole time?” I asked. Twenty-one years was a long time to linger.

“I’ve been doing a lot of things. And nothing at all. Sometimes, I keep the dead company on their journey on, and I take the form of a loved one. It helps, I think.”

Below, a V-shaped formation of geese glided past, moon-silvered wings drenched indigo in the boat’s shadow. Buddy craned his neck to watch, barking playfully.

We drifted in silence for several seconds, or maybe hours. The stars were growing brighter. It was tempting to reach a hand up into that molten river of silver. But I was scared. I knew – somehow – that to touch the stars meant I would join them. To become part of a different kind of cycle.

“How long until we get there?” I asked.

“As long as you’d like.”

“And if I never move on?” Buddy merely glanced at our surroundings, at the vast dome of ocean colors draped with glittering stars.

“Some choose not to.”

I felt my eyes burn with sudden tears.

“Did it have to be so hard?” I asked, my voice thick with suppressed grief. “All the pain leading up to my death…it seems so, unnecessary.”

“I know.”

“What was the point?”

“Does it need one?” Buddy’s head nestled into my lap, warm and heavy. I met his honey-brown eyes, spectral in the moonlight. “I’ve made this journey countless times,” he said. “I don’t have any answers. But I listen. Everyone has their own way of making sense of their death.”

“What do they say?”

“Some say, to know suffering is to know reality. To understand one’s limitations and build resilience. There is no light without darkness. There is no life without death. So too, is there no happiness without suffering. It is all part of a natural balance.”

I hung my head. The boat creaked, dropping lower in the sky. Buddy looked up with a soft whine, but after a moment, he continued.

“Others say, there is no meaning behind suffering. That maybe trying to apply meaning to such an unavoidable, intangible part of existence is simply a way to feel in control of an uncontrollable situation. There is no why; it simply is.”

“What if it’s neither of those?” I asked.

“Does that bring you comfort?”

“Not really.” I took a deep, steadying breath, examining my hands. “I guess I’d like my life to mean something. Have something to point to and say, ‘this was my life, and here’s why it was a worthy one.’ But…”

“Yeah.”

“It’s all just random chaos, isn’t it?”

“Maybe.”

The boat was rising once more, its prow swinging towards that great lunar spotlight. I sighed and leaned my head back, soothed by the gentle rocking. All around us, gauzy moonlight softened the cold, sterile night sky.

I felt untethered from myself. The closer we drifted to the stars, the more the boundaries of my being seemed to drift. I was becoming something new – or rather, something different. By some alchemy both ancient and divine, the separation between myself and the universe had become blurred.

I felt the air in my lungs and was the sky.

I brushed the boat’s wooden planks and was the forest.

Everything I was and was not jumbled inside me. I had been alive: bouncing deliriously from point to point of existence, but now the cells and energy and tiny facets of sentience inside of me had been released. Transformed. Longing to return to their primordial roots.

And again, the world would shape life anew.

The boat lurched as I stood up. My hand stretched out overhead, reaching for the veil of stars. I could feel its pull; feel everything at once.

I stared at Buddy.

I, as Buddy, stared back at me.

Then I blinked, suddenly cut off from that strange interconnectedness. My hand dropped back to my side. I felt a new kind of loneliness.

“I guess I don’t have to understand it,” I sighed. “Suffering. But I think I understand what parts of it meant to me.”

“Meaning is optional.” Buddy paused, reflecting. “But sometimes healing.”

I stooped and wrapped the old dog in my arms, breathing in the scent of his fur. Then I raised my arm skyward for the final time.

My hand split the current of stars above us. The sky rippled, briefly liquid. I closed my eyes, but soon realized I no longer had eyes to close.

I took one last breath. The boat dissipated into a celestial wave. My body spread through the endless night like windblown dandelion fluff. Coming home to everything I was.

I was nothing.

I was everything.

* * *