DEATH

DEATH

My death wasn't as painful or dramatic as I have always been afraid of. It was over in seconds, I didn't even feel the impact. I had always been afraid of dying. As a nurse, I have tended to many a soul on their sojourn exodus out of this world. The scariest part was watching them suffocate and struggle to breathe, going from eighteen breaths a minute, to twelve, to eight, to four, to one, and finally, zero. I tried to do it on my own, to experience what they could have been going through, but I panic every time.

The best death would be a short, not a drawn out one. Lying in a bed for days or weeks while relatives and loved ones trickle in to give you tributes they never tried to give you while you were well seems disingenuous to me. They probably just want to satisfy their curiosity, make sure you are truly dying so they can celebrate and divide your assets in secret. Why else would they let you live your whole life making you feel as if you are an imbecile, then come at your bedside in tears during your final moments to declare their undying love and devotion for you? What purpose would that serve me now that I am soon to be no more? Perhaps if I had known how much I was revered while I was healthy and well, I would have had the fight and the energy to starve off whatever was handicapping me to the deathbed now.

Dying in your sleep is the best death one can hope for. It sure beats being decapitated, or shot, or hanged, or eaten up by cancer where your core becomes hollow from being ravished by disease, and pain tear at you in waves as you become overwhelmed with nausea and fatigue while drowning in your own piss and shit. I never did want to go out like that. If my life's trajectory had placed me on such an unfortunate path I could never endure such agony. I would have swallowed a whole bottle of narcotic agents and just drift off to oblivion.

But fortune smiled on me and although my life was cut short when Ieast expected it and my death was as grotesque as can be, I did not feel a thing. One moment I was here, and the next I was watching the news coverage on TV through a store window, anchoring the accident with my picture and the entire scene on the screens. Yes...that is how I found out that I was dead...on television. I did not hear what they were saying, I was outside the store window. It was an electronics store and they had multiple televisions on display facing the window. They were all tuned to the same channel, and my death story lit up the storefront like a Christmas tree.

As I stood there watching myself on television, it finally hit me. It all makes sense to me now, why I was asking for directions and everyone seemed to ignore me, why dogs saw me and would not stop barking, why I was not hungry or thirsty and did not feel the need for food or water. I felt alienated and in that instant Ionged to be with my family again, to be able to walk the streets and smell the stench of my surroundings, to talk to anyone and have them talk back. I thought of my children and they seemed so distant, I was gone from them forever.

My first child Asil, who was taken from me because I had him when I was a child. My second child Sam, who reminds me so much of myself with his obvious, but misdirected genius. My third child Francis, who I thought was the love of my life, but whose position has been recently usurped by my youngest child. My fourth child Michelle, who I had so much aspirations for, but who broke my heart by becoming pregnant with child, a child I have learned to love and adore. My fifth child Gideon, who reminds me of my infidelity, a product of one heated night of unprotected passion. And lastly, my sixth child Matyas, the new apple of my eye who usurped his brother Francis and who I adore so much that the feeling is lost to all description.

I am forever gone away from all these beautiful souls and I shall possibly never see them again...and I started to cry...and cry...and cry...and cry.

Then the alarm went off and I woke up and realized that it was just a dream. It was, once again, time to get up and leave for work.