Your Friend, Death

Death, in all aspects, is gentle.

He'll tell you otherwise, but he is, much to his dismay. Sometimes he's quick, other times he fades into the picture.

Yes, Death is a he.

He came to me in August, standing tall in some dark glow. He introduced himself. I laughed. Hard. Then I coughed. Hard. I told him it was a cold. He told me it was cancer. It was, I knew that. But I didn't want to tell a man who claimed to be Death I was dying. But I was, and he knew.

My brother wanted to punch him. Not that he could, Death was gentle but he would strike a raging fifteen-year-old if he had it. I didn't tell my brother I had a golfball-sized tumor slowly killing me. I didn't tell him I was going to end up like dad. I knew he was going to find out at some point. I just didn't think to expect that point would be a male personification of Death.

I couldn't question it, I was too tired to. All I cared about was the fact that I was dying and that Death was waiting for me, literally. I can't tell you what made me so special, why he came up to my doorstep to wait for my eventual demise. Maybe he was tired too. That's when I realized Death and dying people have something in common; they wait, a lot.

So we waited, I wondered if people were still dying no that he was technically on some type of vacation. He said they were, but now he wasn't there to hold them when they did die. I didn't question that either. We played checkers a lot, he preferred the red checkers, and he always complained about how I was too good at checkers. I started to love him.

My timing skills aren't as good as my checker skills.

My tumor grew, my talent at checkers withered away, and our time did as well. My brother grew angrier, Death grew more confused. He felt things, human things. He couldn't explain it. To this day I believe it was love. But maybe it was just gas.

I wanted to go back to the beginning. When my tumor was just a golfball and there was more time to be thrown away. Death scoffed at that. He said he'll never understand the human infatuation with the beginning. How we latch onto something that holds everything that's gone like it's still there. It made sense. Death was the end.

I can't tell you the rest, because I don't know where it stops. I'm gone, my body withers in the ground, but I don't know where I am. I know it's not with him. But I'm letting go.

Death will say he's reckless. That he's an angry soul, much like my brother. Sometimes i can still hear the echos of his endless monologues about how he'll have to hold me and I'll fade away into whatever comes after him. He could never understand when humans find it so hard to let go. But now he knows.

And unlike me, you lively souls, he can't seem to let go.