Every Day as the Last

This came from a strangely dark place -- hoping to improve it.

            The room is still and silent �" they wait, listening �" I wait, listening, too. I would be waiting with baited breath, but it is my breath we are all waiting on �" waiting, listening for my breath �" my last breath…

            When I die tonight, my only regret will be what I have left undone �" so many stories bottled up inside me, so many lives left to touch �" and how my loss will hurt the people who love me…

            But thoughts of time and space are irrelevant when I have only minutes to live…

            What can I do? What can I say? If chosen carefully, a person’s final words can mean so much. The dying utterances of famous people are recorded so the wisdom can be passed down to young people, still foolish in their vitality.

I am thinking and not thinking, thoughts flitting through my mind without any real substance as the seconds tick by, unceasing �" time stops for no one �" why should it?

            Their eyes are all on me �" my eyes are everywhere and nowhere �" trying to hold each face, capture them, own them for a moment, to carry them away with me �" to where? The Egyptians, the Aztecs, so many ancient peoples buried their dead with possessions to take with them into the afterlife. Modern people put their bodies in concrete boxes to preserve them for god know what. I will be burned like a pagan �" I don’t suppose I’m allowed to bring anything along.

            When my moments are over, where will I go? Will I be inside each of them, everyone’s and no one’s? Or will I simply go out, disappear like the age-old cliché of the candle flame?

            And what will I leave behind, if anything? Those lives I’ve touched, have I really left a mark? Will it remain, or will it fade after I am gone? The intangibility of all this frightens me. Will I carry my regret and my fear with me, or is that what is left behind? Is that why we dream of paradise?

            Yes �" yes, I know it now, see it more clearly than the room or their faces bent so close to mine, feel it much more keenly than the life leaving my body �" the regret, hanging, ominous as a dark cloud, a toxic vapor filling the room around me, emanating from me �" not just mine, but the regret of all, living and dying and dead �" and I regret that I cannot share this terrible knowing with them…

            I know, and I am dead.

Author's Note

Please help me improve this piece!

Reviews

[Charlotta Yvonne Smith]

It was nicely written. One thing I can say is that..Death is a pretty sensitive topic for me..though..I'm not as uncomfortable talking about it than I used to.

One mistake I can point out is that there are quotation marks in places they don't need to be. Unless if I am missing something, please correct me. But each sentence hit me hard in the heart for some reason.

[DaughterNature]

Thank you. I have a strange relationship with the idea of death, a long string of strange experiences, so I wanted to explore it from a new angle.

I figured out why there were random quotation marks everywhere - the site sometimes mis-formats dashes as scarequotes...

[Einstein Noodle]

ok ... read thru once ... without pause ... first impression is .. does this story teller have a genuine connection with the subject .. (i don't sense it) death is terrifying for some and exquisite for others ... as a reader i am not sure where you are trying to go with this ... when close to death those departing (in my experience) are not concerned with those around them .. they are very focused on the next breath ... stories of "near death experiences" have the common theme of the departing trying to convey ...this is not bad ..don't cry ... you should come with me and i'm sorry for you ... and then its not your time you have to go back ... not sure if this is helpful in any way but those are the things your prose triggered in my pea brain ..
E.

[DaughterNature]

No, I completely agree. That's a little why I wrote it this way. I suppose, in moments of my own emotional weakness and most depressed, that's when I tend to think about death. So, perhaps I was thinking about the hopelessness that I associate with death (obviously haven't experienced it myself, but my dad died when I was only 10, so I have a strange fascination with it).

Please don't say pea brain! I know that a person with no formal education can be just as strong and helpful a critic as anyone!

[Einstein Noodle]

OK :) no pea braining ... I am so sorry for your loss at such a young age ... my wife died when my children were quite young ..two have no memories of her one has bits and pieces and the oldest was 11 and probably suffered the most over her loss .. God bless Nature girl and so glad to have met you.
E.