The Boredom at the End of the World

I was 27 years old when I died.

One of the thousands of members of The 27 Club that remained in obscurity through the shear bad luck of being born with no talent whatsoever. Just another slug sliming across the garden of life, maybe hoping for a nice lettuce leaf to settle on, only this particular slug happened to find himself taken out by a line of salt. In my case this manifested in an undetected heart condition and a tendency to spend extended periods of time in self-imposed isolation. It was weeks before they found my body, bloated and purple like an inflated grape, pretzeled in the bottom of my shower tray where I had collapsed.

I could at least have died in the bathtub like Jim Morrison.

So no, no posey-clutching Gen-Xers in flannel shirts and worn band tees eking out a tear for me. No aged hippies making pilgrimages from 9-to-5 jobs in marketing to leave nuggets of weed on my headstone. No. Just my parents and my older brother, left confused by the cruelty of the world, making an annual trip to my memorial stone where they stand around for an awkward half hour until they feel their obligation is fulfilled.

I didn’t expect to die. I suppose it comes as shock to most people. Despite the guarantees of mega-church leaders (“for the small, small sum of just $19.99 a month, plus tax!”), no one really knows what comes next until they meet Next coming the other way like a bus with failed brakes.

What death actually is, and I’m letting you in on a secret no one wants to hear, is unbelievably boring.

It’s not harps and fluffy clouds. It’s not meeting old family and your long-forgotten pet hamster. It’s not even the spiky red dude with the penchant for “insertions.” At least that would keep you on your toes.

What actually happens is you wake up one day without actually waking up. It’s the worst hangover imaginable; you’re disconnected from everything. You’re numb, which is preferable in some cases, and the whole world is at one constant volume. It reminds me of trying to watch a film on TV while my mom explained the plot badly to my dad so I could concentrate on neither. Just a cacophonous bedlam of everyone talking at once.

Omnipotence can be a curse.

Eventually I got it worked out so I could focus on what I wanted to hear. Even now I can tune into anyone anywhere in the world at any time. Yes, I even heard what you mumbled about your boss as he was walking away today. And yes, I agree with you.

The dead are also, handily, not bound by the same laws of physics as the rest of the universe and we are indeed capable of walking through walls. Or anything else that takes our fancy. What they don’t tell you is that includes the Earth itself so if you are not concentrating you end up floating in space while the galaxy hurtles through the universe at fantastic speed. Luckily the dead are also not obliged to follow the universal speed limit (light) and so can get back to what we were doing relatively quickly. It is inconvenient though.

Now all this sounds like a bit of a lark. Peeking at things previously hidden - I’ll never lose at Clue again! - and knowing the unknowable is pretty fun for the first few years, but it is a lonely affair. You see, while there are presumably billions of dead souls hanging around, we are completely unaware of each other. Can’t see each other, hear each other, touch each other.

It’s just me.

So all I can do is sit and watch you all doing what you do, living your lives and loving your loves, like watching the live stream of a reality TV show on my own. I hope someday it will end, or I can find a way to bring one of you with me.

Sleep tight.