dying

I think that the dying pray at the last not "please," but "thank you," as a guest thanks his host at the door. Falling from airplanes the people are crying thank you, thank you, all the way down the air; and the cold carriages draw up for them on the rocks.

There's actually a sort of comfort in the belief that things can only get worse. It gives one an appreciation for the here-and-now, knowing that each and every moment may be as good as its ever going to get. Anyways, I can't imagine living too happy a life - so much to lose. It only figures that the more miserable your life is, the easier it is to lose it. And, when you can lose it at any moment, any time un-enjoyed must be time well spent. (attrib: F.L. Vanderson)

As far as he could discover, there were no signs of spring. The decay that covered the surface of the mottled ground was not the kind in which life generates. Last year, he remembered, May had failed to quicken these soiled fields. It had taken all the brutality of July to torture a few green spikes through the exhausted dirt.What the little park needed, even more than he did, was a drink. Neither alcohol nor rain would do. Tomorrow, in his column, he would ask Broken-hearted, Sick-of-it-all, Desperate, Disillusioned-with-tubercular-husband and the rest of his correspondents to come here and water the soil with their tears. Flowers would then spring up, flowers that smelled of feet."Ah, humanity..." But he was heavy with shadow and the joke went into a dying fall. He trist to break its fall by laughing at himself.

So that's it. That's the big secret. I tried to kill myself on New Year's eve. Just like Sadie did last night. Only she really did it. I don't know all the detatils, just the basics. She took a bunch of pills. I don't know what they were or where she got them. I'd like to think they were Wonder Drug. Then at least she could have gone thinking she was flying.

_Do you think there__ somewhere else, some other place to go after this one?_ Mandy blurted out.__ou mean when you die, where will you end up?_ Alecto asked her. __I wouldn__ know_ back to whatever void there is, I suppose._____e thought about it_ every living thing dies alone, it__l be lonely after death,_ Mandy sighed sadly. __hat freaks me out, does it scare you?___ don't want to be alone,_ Alecto replied wearily. __e won__ be, though. We__l be dead, so we__l just be darkness, not much else, just memories, nostalgia and darkness.___ don__ want to be any of that either though,_ Mandy exclaimed, bursting into tears and crying, keeping her eyes to the floor, her voice shaky as she spoke to him. __hen we die, we__l still be nothing, the world will still be nothing, everything__l just be nothing!___ou__e real though, at least that__ something,_ Alecto pointed out, holding his hand out in front of her. Smiling miserably, Mandy took his hand in her own and sat there beside him quietly.

Tell yourselves whatever you__ like, but I__ afraid it doesn__ make it true,_ Mearth sighed, beginning to look impatient. __tep aside Mandy, I have to remediate him, otherwise you__l find yourself in a whole mess of trouble.___ou can__ do this, it__ wrong,_ Mandy insisted.__ou don__ have a choice, Mandy! Either you let his life compromise the lives of everybody else in the world, or you let me remediate him and get it over with,_ Mearth icily declared.__Do what she says, Mandy Valems_._ Alecto added, standing up and staring with glazed eyes at Mearth.__ can__,_ said Mandy.__Go away!_ Alecto shouted at her suddenly, glaring with narrowed eyes, speaking in a voice that hardly sounded like his own. __et out of here, Mandy Valems! I hate you, I want you to leave me alone! Go home and don__ ever come back here!____._ Mandy started, looking totally shocked.__ said I hate you, don__ you understand anything? Go away, get out of here!_ Alecto repeated menacingly, stepping forward in a threatening manner. He looked like a mad dog, shivering as he chased her away from his site. She tearfully took off running, seeming both shocked and horrified, and he watched her leave for a moment with a blank expression, his dark eyes hollow. He looked like he was going to black out, but Mearth walked quickly towards him, for once not smiling at all. If it weren__ for her eyes, she would__e looked like a person. __hat was very cruel of you to do, Sydney Tar Ponds. I thought you loved her,_ she disappointedly exclaimed.__ do love her, she__ my friend, and that__ why I said that stuff to her,_ Alecto replied forlornly. __one of it__ true, I don__ hate her at all_ but I know what__ going to happen and I don__ want her to see it, so I lied to her and told her I hated her_ can you explain to her after_ why I said all that to her?

Why did you revive me?_ Alecto repeated. __ell_ uh, well_._ Mandy hesitated, her voice full of sudden misery. __hey say there are five stages of grief, you know_ five stages. denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Not in any particular order. Anyhow, I denied your death, I was angry about it, I bargained with Mearth to try and get her to un-bury your site and I was depressed about the whole ordeal. One thing I just froze up on though was acceptance. I just couldn__ accept your death. It was really cruel the way you died, and I missed you so much_ Mearth, my parents, the cops, Dr. Pottie, they all thought I was crazy. When people think you__e crazy, that label automatically dehumanizes you, because people can use it to discredit everything you say with, __h, pay no mind to her, she__ just this crazy lunatic with a dead imaginary friend._ I just wanted to do something, anything to make it all go away, and I decided that I wanted to revive you.

That's how lonely and sad I was. Dying is not that hard. Lime the air being sucked slowly out of a room, the will to live was slowly seeping out of me. When you feel like rhat, dying doesn't seem like such a big deal.

I can't see the logic in medicating a grieving person like there was something wrong with her, and yet it happens all the time... you go to the doctor with symptoms of profound grief and they push an antidepressant at you. We need to walk through our grief, not medicate it and shove it under the carpet like it wasn't there.

I spend a lot of time wondering what dying feels like. What dying sounds like. If I__l burst like those notes, let out my last cries of pain, and then go silent forever. Or maybe I__l turn into a shadowy static that__ barely there, if you just listen hard enough.

I am not sad anymore. I am not weak or tender or quiet like you remember because the second you said those words and closed that door, I sold my soul to the part of myself I had buried in order to love you, to let you touch every inch of my rotten body, for I wanted to be touchable and not so strange. Not so sad and tender, like I__e always been, they say, so I changed. And then your glances and words throwing knives with no return about my change of habits and ways of living, being, and I nodded and smiled, dying silently a little bit inside.

We are only mortal flesh.

Flowers are evil, because they live just to die for the love of other people. You don__ believe me? Try it for yourself and see if you__l be good afterwards. Undeath is a way of life, for some things. That doesn__ make it good or anything. Especially anything. Nothing makes anything anything. Because nothing is a serious matter, and anything just is.

In the end, if we don't have God we don't have anything other than an end.

We are, perhaps uniquely among the earth__ creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, fearing the future, discontent with the present, unable to take the idea of dying, unable to sit still.

I knelt in front of life, folded my hands and prayed for some more time; there couldn't be any. My heart bled and so did my tearful eyes.Time, they say, flies, but I saw it slowly passing by taking each of my tardy breaths with it as it walked out of my life...

In the same way, teenagers imagine dying young because death is more imaginable than the person that all the decisions and burdens of adulthood may make of you.

I worried I would miss it, and I knew, from losing Wyatt, that things happen the moment the soul is released. Wyatt had been there in the school, watching me, making sure I survived. Souls linger_they do. They linger a bit before they turn toward eternity. It could be that no matter how perfect their future will be, the past still tugs for a moment.