mry writes

*a story fragment*

One rainy evening everything changed. In an instant, a blink of an eye, nothing was the same. Not unexpected, I admit. After all, living is quite different from not living. Nothing, though, can truly prepare you for the actuality of not living. You cannot know the vast difference between being alive and being not alive until you experience it.

When my life ended a thought flashed through my mind. “This cannot be happening. I cannot end like this. I have too many things still to do. Too many things left unsaid. Too many things undone. I have too much life left to live, too much love yet to share. I am not ready for the end.”

My objections did not matter. My new situation could not be undone.

How had this… unfortunate… state of affairs happened?

A new view of my former world, my last moments, appeared. I saw, in agonizing detail, a gust of wind, strong, unyielding, slam into the sheltering tree above us. Unseen and unheard, a weak limb yielded to the incorporeal force. Gravity taking hold, the limb plummeted to earth. Unfortunately, I was standing between the limb and the earth. I tried to shout a warning. I had no mouth; I had no shout.

And now we circle back to my new situation. Something -everything- had changed. Everything felt so strange.

It struck me. No pun intended. My world was now empty; hollow; a void. Everything and everyone I had known was gone from me, and me from them. In the middle of a single superb moment of happiness everything had changed. I was tasting a pair of desirable lips; I was feeling the first pangs of love, and it was cruelly taken from me.

Would it have killed anyone to let me be for a while? A few more years. That is what I need. That is what I want. Even a few more days, a few hours. Would it kill anybody to give me at least a few more achingly beautiful joyful hours? That is not really too much to ask, is it?

I would spend them dancing, extending my final moments of joy until eternity claimed us. Eternity would claim us; it always does.