The End of it All

Being dead is not what I expected it to be; not what anybody expected it to be, I don’t think. At least you don’t worry about dying. How long have I stood here, if standing is what I’m doing? I have no idea. Time seems unimportant now, and I’ve been trying to think of the last time that time seemed to matter. The building I’m looking at, I’m sure that wasn’t there at some point, but I can’t seem to remember when it wasn’t.

It wasn’t always like this, vague images arise in my mind of events, probably of when I was alive, but they become unclear. I struggle to think of these, to make them clear in my mind and when I do they clear some more.

I remember seeing my father, he is also dead, and we recognised each other but that was all; no emotion. There’s little point to that now. It’s amazing how little of what mattered before matters now. I might see him still, but I no longer recognise anyone.

Most of the memory of what it was like before is brought back when I see a person who is new to death. The way they try to communicate, to talk. They fail, of course. You can’t talk without a body, without air moving through your system. It’s not that they can’t communicate; it’s intrinsic to all creatures, living or dead, just not the way we did it before. But it’s more than that. It’s the way they feel the need to involve themselves, to join with others, to relate. It takes some time to realise that it’s pointless, it has no benefit. Not in the end.

I was like that too, at the start. I’d try to be with others but they’d ignore me and move on. And now I do that to others. I used to reply to them, to explain how it is, but it doesn’t make any difference to them, not really. So now I just move away. They’ll come to understand and it will make no difference how or when.

At first I did what most do; I found my family.  I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it’s frustrating when you have very little ability to affect the world around you and all you can do is watch and wait. You know that they’ll all be like you one day, and all the struggling and striving and trying to be and do more is strange when seen from here. Time makes it worse; I have no idea how time passes and so years of their time go by in what to me seems like a moment, and then they were no longer where I’d found them. I don’t know where they are or went. They’re probably here with me now. Somewhere.

This is all there is. Sometimes I can find myself in their time, seeing things they see. I stood in a churchyard and watched the living as they came and went from their church. How strange and pointless their attachment to their belief. Will they look back and regret their devotion? I don’t suppose it really matters, as nothing really matters at all. People strive while alive. They help, they love, they kill, they progress, they build and they reproduce. But at the end. At the end it’s all the same, just like me.

I don’t remember how I came to be as I am now. I think hard, but all I see is a flash of movement; nothing tangible. I don’t suppose it matters.

I wonder if this will be the same always. I see people who are very different to me and there are far more dead than alive. I’m guessing we’re all here.

The sky is dark and covered in circles. If I concentrate and become closer to their world then the circles break apart and I can see single points of light. Stars. I remember stars, and the moon. I went to the moon. I came back.

There’s a place that draws me, in the churchyard, and I find myself there many times. A small area with a stone which I guess is my grave. I read the name on the stone but it doesn’t seem familiar, although it’s probably mine. I look around and see others doing the same. Another comes to the same grave; an old woman, also dead. She looks at me for a while with an expression no longer familiar to me, her mouth opening and closing as she tries to speak; newly dead. A flicker of recognition goes through my mind but then it’s gone. I drift away.

The longer I am here the more I lose and the less aware of the world I become. I’d like to think that this would be replaced by something else, but there is nothing else. How long have I been here? How long before I no longer care?

The building is gone now. I have a feeling that time moves past me so quickly and yet I seem to be unaware of so much, and less and less with time. The sky swirls with rotating stars and it takes more effort each time that I try to bring myself to the world I left. I don’t think this is what people were asking for when they prayed to their gods for eternal existence.

I force myself to slow to the world and I see people around me, the living and the dead. I have no idea when this is, or where this is. The people seem strange to me. A small girl stops and sees me. A woman with her does not and struggles to drag her away. The girl points, but is dragged away and watches me over her shoulder. Ironically, the fear we have when we’re alive about dying and losing what we have is what makes people alive; what gives them purpose. I have no fear of dying or losing anything but there is no purpose, no point to anything.

The parent who protects its child, why? The time we are alive is so small compared to the time we are dead, what is the point of stretching this time for another fraction of eternity? Why are people scared? No one seems scared that they did not exist before they were born, so what is different about after they die? Surely non-existence to them should be the same at either end.

Time goes by, probably. I seem to be less conscious of the world now than ever before and I think that eventually I will stop. Not die, just stop. Become nothing, as I was before I became alive. Maybe that will be a change, maybe the end. Who knows?

Being dead is not what I expected it to be. Thoughts change. I have little left. Barely aware of what is around me, of myself. I think that maybe

The End of It All.