It’s half past three. I am tired and cannot stay awake anymore. All there is left is the pungent smell of aromatics from the floor freshly cleaned in the hallway, the ticking sound of the clock, the beeps from the heart monitor and the sound of drips. It all together forming a melancholic orchestra. A final performance.
I would have preferred a sunny day. Though, as a youngling, I hated sunny days. I always cribbed about the sun and jeered clouds covering it momentarily. I reminisce about the days of having friends around. Chatting and nagging each other. Comparing stupid things that do not matter and gossiping about random people we did not care for. Just existing in the moment with them was so peaceful. I thought I was willing my hours away but that was the best time I ever spent. Not the accolades, not the achievements, but those lazy summer days, in front of a single fan cooling our youth. It cooled it all away too soon. We grew up, and got sour. Forgot about the sweetness of passing time. Too busy to meet, and relax. Everything soon became a serious endeavor. We became the very things we looked down upon and promised to never become.
The children moved away, after their mother died. I guess I was a bitter old man after she was gone and they had their own lives to live. I failed to become a better father than my own. Parenthood sure is a difficult burden; to love with the promise of being unloved, in the end. I guess I am just trying to cope with the pain of having failed them. I will be better if there is a next time, though the only big achievement of my career was proving that God truly is dead.
Now my eyes are straining and my eyelids like heavy curtains are falling. They are all gone, none of them are left. My parents left first then my best friend. My wife died and then my friends followed. I never got to tell them how much they meant to me and how much I loved them. There never seemed to be enough time.
Then a miracle happened. Maybe all hope is not lost, as if a soft lullaby a poem was sung by a soft voice.
It was time, the curtain call. “Did I do enough?”, I asked the void.
“You did just fine.” A voice replied. Was it the voice of my wife? No, maybe it was that of my first love? Maybe that friend whom I never got to meet again? Was it my mother? No, I guess I knew who it was.
“Ah, God?” I wondered.
“Haha, no. I am just you. But sure, you can imagine I am God.” , she replied.
“What now?”, I asked.
“Whatever you need, and how much ever long you want to take to understand what is happening.”
I fell silent. This is it though, unforeseeable time and darkness. There was no passing, no pain, no information other than whatever few thoughts that I had willed to stay together. If I let go they would scatter away, and with them, me. There was no memory to reminisce, no more happy or sad thoughts. It was not cold, neither was it warm. A formless volume filled the universe in me, deafening every string I tried to pluck. No heaven, no hell, no loved ones. Just between this final moment and nothing, is all there was. It was forever but it was also now. I waited. We waited. It was silent.
“So, I guess it is time? Can we close?” The voice asked.
I panicked. It was like trying to hold on to a string that did not exist as I stood at the pulpit of everything and nothing.“Please just five more minutes”, I begged.
“Ok, five more minutes.”
“Ok?! Maybe I should have asked for more?”
“You asked for exactly how much you had left.”
“So it is all written. Writ in stone!”
“You will know it all soon.”
“But now, once I know it, it wouldn’t matter.”
“Exactly” I felt a sneer fall across the faceless voice as I became the final note in the melody of her voice.