The Hangman's Barn

I’m not one to hang myself half-seriously. On the contrary, I carefully planned the circumstances of my death; and while I did so, I did not anticipate how long it would take for death to finally come. And so I’m still here, hanging - obediently, rather as a dog waits at the end of its leash - for what seems an inordinate length of time.

Let me begin again by saying, as unequivocally as possible, that I do not recommend such a death to anyone except the painfully old and the terminally ill. That I took matters into my own hands (as I do belong, reluctantly, to the latter category) is a choice which, in death, will be difficult to reconcile with myself.

But I simply cannot go on living; nor can I afford to.

I chose a barn as the scene for my death as Cassius and Brutus might have chosen the Roman Senate for the murder of Caesar. I wanted an audience, after all, and not one that might interfere. And indeed, predictably, seeing bovine, goatish, and avian stares return my stiffening gaze, I feel satisfied with myself. If you’ll allow a flight of imagination - before my curtain draws, as it were - I might even consider these barn dwelling animals to be curious about my present state. But no more curious, possibly, than when thunder shakes the rotting beams of the roof, or cold hands reach under their ruminating stomachs to drain milk from their suede-soft udders.

I can feel their searching stares, as if the paroxysms of death are rather caused by their animal curiosity.

The beams of the roof: I must confess, I chose these withering beams with purpose. If they obliged in sustaining me, such would be my fate. If they collapsed, I supposed I should survive until my body fails, or at least until the World Cup. But the beams are holding, as the gathering darkness suggests, and, having no recourse to defy gravity’s pull or soften the trenchant sting of this rope, I feel pleasantly resigned, already, to the world of inaction.

Given the choice, which here I no longer have, I might relieve myself of this unsavory death, but how much sweeter the relief of being finally without options. The constant negotiation of being alive, and the stubborn willfulness to be oneself, which every moment demands, are burdens I look forward to shirking in death. How appropriate, then, to be in this barn, among the cubbyholes of cows, goats, and chickens; to have the smell of their soiled straw bedding, wet and heavy with urine, filling my nostrils in this ultimate moment. I belong with them, for my life is being wrested from me, and my death is a mundane slaughter. They understand at least this.

Death, indeed, is coming closer; my body is not so surprised as it was a moment ago. The clenching and shaking and spasming, at first insistent, is now intermittent and only as a matter of course. The narrow tunnel of light through which I’ve seen the world until now is now refining itself into the most delicate pinprick.

But this I could foresee: someone approaching, a concerned party. I feared someone might cut me down, if they had neither sympathy nor knowledge. Yes, she is coming closer, she is going to cut me down, to resurrect me; but no, I see now, it’s my mother, who passed long ago, with me by her side, I saw it myself, she’s here, that familial face in this humble barn, to bring me home.