The Number of Times I Died

The Number of Times I Died


I counted the number of times I died this past year. Likely four or five times. Maybe more or maybe fewer. How would I really know?


How could any of us really know how many times we die in a given year?


The carbon monoxide episode over Thanksgiving. Maybe that killed my whole family. Or maybe just me. Or maybe just some of my family.


The two times I looked down too long on my phone while driving, trying to find a specific podcast episode, and ... bam! A light tap into the guard rail. A near miss of a car in the lane to my left. Maybe one or both of those times I actually died. Or maybe some random time while driving since I was not the driver at fault, but I didn't see it coming.


Maybe I died in my sleep one night. My wife says I have sleep apnea and should look into it. I haven't. So maybe more than once that way?


Definitely the time I almost drowned. I'm far more certain about that one. Without any understanding how I was able to do so, I washed up onto the beach, in an alcove, about a mile north of my entry point, due to, what, a lucky riptide? My last memory before waking up on shore was giving up to drown. Seems unlikely I lived through that. Far more likely that was also a time I died.


Instead, I struggled home, recounted my experience to my wife who was very sympathetic, and we continued living ... living? ... thankful for yet another close ... close? ... call. There have been many, so many, over our years together.


But, as I said, I'm pretty confident that I drowned and washed up onto shore in a new life this summer. And the carbon monoxide episode this Fall. And that I had a fatal car accident. And one more time.


I'll put it at four this year. And two last year.


But we can never really know, though, can we?


"What do you think?" I asked my wife.

"About you dying and returning to life in the world exactly as it is without any changes and no one realizing and we all do it, too, also without noticing?" She shook her head softly and scoffed gently. She was half paying attention to me, which is fair, since this is a common discussion theme for us.


"Yep," I responded undeterred.


She swirled milk into her tea and sipped it. "So there are millions, trillions of these alternate universes with all of us living our lives and not realizing we create new ones, exact replicas that just keep going, when we die?" She smiled softly as if she were talking to one of our children, when they were younger, and were less bright than they were at all points in their lives.


"Yep," I responded again, but was suddenly jealous that she had tea and I did not, so I poured myself a cup. I took mine with sugar, but didn't see a sugar bowl nearby. It wasn't worth the search.


"Do we, all the people in the world, always follow the latest version of you?"


"Huh?"


"This is your alternate world," she said. "You should pay attention when people respond to your thought experiments." I could tell from her light smile that she was teasing me. She repeated her question.


"Apparently." I replied. "Maybe that's why we're all so solipsistic." I took a sip of tea and wished it were sweeter.


"If it were true, then we would correct in being so," she replied and without a beat, added, "The sugar bowl is behind the tea pot."


END


==


Epilogue


In one life, my wife was lying, miraculously alive, in a hospital bed after the crash. A truckdriver had swerved from the middle lane to try to make a sharp last moment exit from the highway and her small car was just to his right. She and the truck tumbled through the exit guardrail, not much recognizable left of either vehicle. She lived, somehow. The truck driver wasn't so lucky.


In another life, she was dead from the car crash.


I nodded my head understanding what had really happened. While I felt joy for myself, for our family and future, I also felt horror, true horror, for the other me. The one left behind in the other universe.


I left the hospital, my mind set on what I would do next. There was no reason to continue living in this universe. I was the one left behind.


I jumped off the bridge onto the watery rocks below.


Somehow I survive the fall, the leap.


It isn't a miracle. It's a hell.