I don't understand why people always talk about seeing a light at the end of the tunnel when you die. It's more like seeing your life in infinite dimensions and timelines in front of you, but all you can make out from far away are the moments that punched you in the gut the hardest. So you're just squinting and getting a headache and then all of a sudden, you get the wind knocked out of you.

I'm not talking about the middle school bullies or the time you wore two different shoes to work, but the ones that really threw your life into a tailspin — and the worst part? I had no clue what these moments meant when they happened. I just tacked them onto the running balance of life's memories and experiences that I let pass me by.

Then, I looked down on my most successful moment. This is what they talk about, right? Some people are curious to see what fate selects for them, but I knew exactly what was lined up. My priorities were crystal-clear. I was surrounded by everyone at my firm just a few years ago, looking out at a glorious ring of feigned admiration and poorly-concealed boredom. My ego trip made the weak, scattered claps sound like thundering applause. This was the moment that they announced my big promotion, the moment that proved that my sacrifices were all worth it. I remember how powerful I felt. I also remember how I felt when I realized I had absolutely no one to call with the good news. Everyone was long-gone by then.

Then all of a sudden, I felt like every last molecule of oxygen had been knocked out of my lungs. I saw my wife — not the way I remembered her, but the way I left her, the image I have been trying my hardest to block out for nearly a decade. Those big, brown eyes looked hollow and glazed over in the reflection of the fluorescent ceiling lights. Her skin had lost its summer glow long ago, leaving behind a pale, cold face that was tired of grasping onto something that was no longer there.

I looked down at the withered form of his wife, this grayscale version of a woman whose heart was once larger than life itself, and sighed. I could feel my mouth moving to say those haunting words and tried as hard as I could to stop it. I clenched my jaw and felt like I was stuck in the world's most cruel lucid dream, trapped in an impossibly vivid nightmare that I could never wake up from. There was nothing I could do anymore to change the past, the present, the future.

"I have to go. I'm going to be late for my flight to the conference."

I hadn't noticed it then, but all I could see now was the last ray of light in her eyes going out. That was the moment when she realized it was time to let go. She died later that evening while I was listening to a speaker drone on about billboard advertisements hours after my session. I had only stayed because the firm's senior leadership was sticking around and I was determined to make partner. Even in that moment, I was thinking about how I could climb to the next rung in the ladder to see the grass on the other side instead of watering my own lawn. I didn't even find out until I turned my phone back on at the hotel, hours later. My phone was off so as to be a courteous attendee and apparently, a devastatingly awful husband.

Honoring my wife in death as I did during her life, I ran away. I couldn't deal with the loss and could not even fathom talking to the kids then. They had flown in from their respective corners of the country to be with their mother in her last moments, and I decided to take my last precious moment with her and smash it into a million pieces under the boot of my cowardice.

I couldn't face them, and so I chose to simply not to. It has been eight long years since I've spoken to either of my children. I last saw them at my wife's funeral and felt the words get stuck in my throat every time I tried to think of the right thing to say, the right combination of words that would magically make this all okay.

Now I'm in the same hospital I last saw my wife at, living only thanks to a series of tubes and machines with the occasional mental zap of cruel irony to keep me on my toes. I had a massive stroke that my doctors say is the result of years of neglect, which is perfectly on-brand for me. I guess those long hours, intensely stressful weeks, and quick bites of junk food between meetings kind of wrecked my body over the years.

I always thought I would die surrounded by my loved ones, but I could only picture being surrounded by my coworkers also slowly dying in captivity, now seemingly mocking me with their applause at my failed spectacle of a life. I made partner by sacrificing everything. Why did I ever expect anything more? I wasn't even there.

I wish I had the strength to pull the tube out of my trachea so I could laugh one last time. All this just to give them a house in total disrepair and a check for the meager amount left after medical bills and gambling debt. This is how my legacy and my body finally die: alone, cold, and condensing 65 years of repressed emotion into one last, desperate tear.

I hope there's nothing at all on the other side. I can't handle continuing to browse through my library of mistakes. I can't handle seeing her again and needing to find the right words when there are none.