Death Summarised

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Summing up my life was easy on the spot. Memories near the surface, memories linked to each other by smell, taste, bodily feeling. The memories born forth from my brain patterned themselves and then the most relevant themed ones became accessible easily, integrated into my train of thought.

I’d seen a lot, travelled a lot, experienced too much for one man to do so young. Disappointment generally ran the game here, everything I hadn’t managed to do properly, the wasted time. Loss of childhood too quickly, missed opportunities as I had not the experience to pick the choices that would round out my psyche and prevent what was now the culmination of my life.

It had just been left to finally decide the method of death, reducing the impact on those who found me. In insurance circles, the death reports commonly say, ‘cause of death : ingested 50 paracetamol’ and the frequently added notes, ‘knew what he was doing’. No mess, no major cleanup, no chance to turn back, especially with my already sensitive liver.

I had to wander in and out of a couple of shops to buy what I needed, the law being what it is making it impossible to buy all 50 in one purchase. So I set off home with my method of death, to organise my things, finish my life off. It’s amazingly looking back on things that I managed to walk under the wheels of that white van. That the driver didn’t bother hitting the brakes till he’d dragged me about twenty metres down the road. Grinding me up, breaking my hip, my back and crushing my skull.

For a while there I lost grip of reality, didn’t know what had happened, in and out of light and dark, unsure if people were moving around me. I couldn’t quite focus on them, but they were moving around me for definite, whispering away.

When I finally managed to look on the scene, it was from the other side of the road, not wanting to get up too close. Luckily my place of death was a dead end side street off the main road out of town. The police weren’t in a hurry to move the van off the road to allow traffic to pass. They made markings and circles on the road, from the point of impact, to the point of stoppage. Somewhere along between those markings I crossed the point between survival and death. I certainly didn’t remember the pain across that sort of distance.

I walked home down the grey streets, no greyer than they were normally. If colour were in the real world, I wasn’t going to miss it for now. I was walking step by step towards my home and flicking idly through my memory for religious and spiritually educated clues as to the timetable ahead of me. No bright light to climb towards, no tunnel, no voices at the end of said tunnel. The moving shadows and whispering suggested a void or a darkness, but I couldn’t say which.

What am I supposed to think? Am I supposed to plead with ‘my God’ to sit in heaven with the good people? I knew that during my life I had committed acts that would preclude my staying up there. But then I wasn’t a religious person and didn’t believe in either heaven or hell in the catholic visions anymore, if I had ever. ‘A man of science, but not a scientologist’ I used to joke. It was ultimately true, but maybe unfair on some peoples ears.

Arriving home, I let myself into my apartment. At least the key worked and I had some control over my environment, or did I? Was I imagining I was doing this? A parallel world would be fine but I had witnessed the painstaking emergency services work at the scene of my death and they were certainly dealing with a real human being and not a phantom. My birds sat in their cage with closed eyes. I watched their trembling and rocking gently back and forth in their sleep and decided I didn’t want to scare them if I was but a phantom.

Opening my fridge and switching on the kettle I had no problem dealing with the world around me, maybe I should do this in one of my neighbours places? Watch their amazement at the milk in their fridge rapidly going down, I chuckled aloud at the thought.

The place still needed cleaning up. When you are depressed and tired beyond belief with life you don’t do too much cleaning up until you yourself start to feel embarrassed. Almost a nesting compulsion, carried out in short bursts of energy allowed by the mind, in a hope to not suffer any ill founded embarrassment as you are carted away on the final stretcher. Thinking back to another group of medics pulling a mate with broken ribs out of a squat and feeling proud in some distorted way when they commented, ‘this is the cleanest squat we’ve ever been in’. But then there were squats and there were squats. The difference between someone who can’t afford legal accommodation and someone who can’t get up in the night to relieve himself is quite enormous in my eyes.

I looked at my phone, picked it up and browsed the menu. Who should I call? Now what was the precursor number to block ringer identity? A landline and a mobile and maybe an anonymous phonebox would be the best method of at least trying to see if I could speak from the grave to my family and say goodbye. It’s something you can do whilst ill, on your deathbed. There it is the emotionally easiest method of saying goodbye to family members, but a suicide (well, pre-empted by an accident, but same thing – sudden death) doesn’t usually leave you time to say goodbye to loved ones.

I was interrupted by a knock at my door. I put the phone down and looked to the corridor leading to my door. I realised that now might be the time I get to see what life has in store for me, where the format of death would be worked out finally and I could rest in peace (figuratively speaking)

As I walked boldly up to the door and unlocked it I knew it was the right thing to do. I turned the handle and fell to the ground. No carpet, just cold tarmac. Immense pain in my head and street noises surrounded me.

Unable to move a muscle, I just stared up at the bottom of the vehicle I was under and decided to close my eyes, sink into the darkness and die right there and then.

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Written during a time when I thought I was worse off than dead through the varying symptoms of a brain injury caused in a sports accident. It was 'me' that day and a few days around it. Writing isn't usually about academic reason but about contemporary life in whatever disguise you hide it under.