I didn’t expect dying to be so easy. There we were, all of us, gathered in my bedroom. I was on the bed, or in the bed I should say, and you my family my loved ones were all about me in every direction, coming and going those last days. At the time I remember thinking it was sad or hard. It’s difficult to remember why, I think it was about me going away and not being sure when I’d see you again, and at the same time feeling bad for you that you also didn’t know when you’d see me again. I think that’s what all the tears were about, and more than the tears, the weight, the imminence. As I remember it, we were all counting the seconds, the minutes. Is this the last book I will ever read? The last slice of pizza? Is this the last joke? Is this the final time I will sign my name?
You know how when you get tired, and you’re in bed, you start to feel the ease of sleep, the beckoning. Well, it's not so hard to die either. It's a physical sensation, not mental. Your brain takes the worries and puts them on the shelf and decides it can readdress the worries in the morning—if they are still there. You feel the softness of the pillow, the weight of the sheets. You are very much your body at that moment, a lump of flesh in the bed. It feels warm, it feels good. You have not finished everything you wanted to do today—there are dirty dishes, unread books, exercise never done, things not said. Not everything is tidy. It’s just, you know, bedtime. It’s time for bed. You are tired, and it’s time to sleep, that’s all. It’s no big deal. You’ll get up in the morning and there you’ll be again, just like before.
Do you understand what I’m saying? You don’t, before you go to bed at night, write out instructions for how everyone should carry on while you’re asleep, do you? I hope you don’t do that. You don’t put everything away. You don’t call every loved one and tell them goodnight, over and over, every night. I don’t think you do that.
So we were there. I was in the bed. I had that feeling that I was nothing more and nothing less than my body. My body was tired and needed to rest. That’s all. What if I let it rest? What if I let myself fall asleep? It felt so good to feel the bed under me, holding up my weight, my skin, my bones, my hair, my organs, my blood. It felt so good to let the bed do all the work. And what if I never had to do this work again, this work of getting out of the bed, groaning, throwing up in the toilet, straining to move my bowels, staggering around the house, slobbering down my dinner.
I don’t even know why that should be sad. Do you cry every time you go to sleep?
Here, where I am, no time has passed since then, since my “death.” I assume it’s different for you, at least that’s the way I remember it, logically, even though I can’t feel time any longer in that linear way. There are a bunch of us here who talk about it, who try to remember what time meant and why it was so limiting, or scary. Tell me if this sounds right. For you, time is measured in units. One unit of time passes, then another, then another. These units of time are all lined up, in order. Time’s not like that here at all. All the time is around me, all of the time. The only time is now, or right now as I think you say it. The time never bypasses me, escapes me. It’s not like—oh, there it went, I missed my time. And I don’t have to plan for it, either. Like, I need to pay attention, because so and so is coming, and I have to make a note of it, so I don’t miss out, and then have to wait until another time. Time has stopped. The old way—the way you see time—doesn’t make sense to me anymore.
But that’s not because I “forgot” in the sense that you forgot when too much time lapses and then you can no longer remember some piece of information you stored in your brain. That’s not it at all. For me, no time has passed since my “death.” The reason I can’t remember your time anymore isn’t because any time has gone by, it’s because there’s no need for that structure here, there’s no context for it, there’s no benefit to counting long or short, there’s no ordering of moments. For you, you have two infinities divided by the present. You have the infinite past and the infinite future, and then this tiny window in the middle of the present, which you hardly pay attention to, because it’s so tiny compared to the infinities surrounding you. Here, time is not segmented at all, or I should say, there simply is no time.
That’s why my “death” wasn’t sad or hard at all, when I see it from here. Nothing ended. There was no goodbye. I’m still here, right here. You are here with me. I mean, I know you are there, over there, but let me put it this way, I’m in the bedroom and you are in the family room. I just came into the bedroom to look for my socks. It hasn’t even occurred to me to miss you. How could I miss you? I’m just in the bedroom looking for socks. Then I’ll come back out. Or you can come in here whenever you want. It’s not a big deal. Why would it be?
I hear from my friends here that the people still there cry and think about us and wonder what we are doing and wonder why we don’t visit and give a sign that we are still here. I don’t get it. I’m right here. Like I said, I’m in the bedroom sorting my socks. What are you crying about?
I bet you are wondering if it hurt. That’s the other thing I wanted to tell you. And back to sleeping. You know how when you are asleep, and dreaming, you still have a sense of yourself, that it’s you inside the dream, but you can’t control what’s happening to you? That’s the best way I can describe it. Once I felt that sleepiness coming over me, that final sleepiness, it was a sense not of resignation, not a sense of fear, just a sense of curiosity, like what now? And I was in that place for a while. I don’t know how long. Like I said we don’t keep track of time here, since there isn’t any, any time. It wasn’t scary, it was just that even without time you still have to go from point A to point B. So there was a sense of distance being traveled, both geographically, like the sense that I had to get from there to here, but also this sense of needing to wait, that the wait was somehow useful or I should say necessary.
You know how, for example, when you travel to Paris, you get to the airport two hours early, and it takes forever to get through security. And then you sit there with your coffee and your paper. And you know you’re in between. You’re not at home. But you’re not in Paris yet either. You are excited to be going somewhere, but you aren’t there yet. But you are far enough gone that you aren’t going back. Then you get on the plane, and you don’t regret it, not at all, you know the plane is flying to Paris. You can’t get to Paris without being on the plane. You aren’t doing any work of flying or traveling, the plane is doing the work, but still you sit there and the plane takes you through the air, over the Atlantic, and then you get to Paris. And even when you get there, you’re not there yet. You have to get your bags, go through customs, and even then you’re still in the airport in the suburbs. So you get a cab, and then finally an hour later, the cab lets you out at your rental, and you go upstairs, and you put your suitcase away, and you wash your face, and you come back down to the street, and it’s afternoon, and there’s a boulangerie across the way, and you walk over, and buy a baguette, and you go to the grocery store and buy some cheese and a bottle of red, and you walk over by the Seine and you sit down with your lunch, and now you are in Paris, now you are there, you are finally there under the Paris sky. It wasn’t hard, it wasn’t painful, but it took a while to get there.
And like I said, it’s not just that geographically it takes a while to get from Point A to Point B. It’s that you are going through this transition where you are in between. You have left Point A and it takes a while for the context and the framework and the assumptions of that place to subside, and then you are in the middle, and then you start to assume the framework and context and assumptions of the new place, but they come upon you gradually, and by the time you get there, you are finally ready to be there.
Does that sound hard? It wasn’t hard at all.
And then when you finally get there, to Paris, there you are, by the river, with your bread and your cheese and your wine. That’s where you are. That’s what you can taste. You are looking at the river and the barges and the trees and here’s a little wind. And that’s where you are. And back home in Cleveland or New York or Salt Lake or wherever, your friends and family are back home, but you’re not sad, you are doing your thing in Paris and they are home doing their thing, and they are not counting the seconds you are gone, and they are not sad, and you are not counting the seconds you are gone, you are both simply doing the requirements and pleasures of the day, until it’s time to see each other again.
That’s the best I can say, that’s as much as I know how to say. Is that I’m here, it’s heaven, everything is fine, it’s better than fine. You don’t have all the words I have, so I’ll say fine. There’s no time here. Can you imagine? I know you can’t. It’s wonderful, absolutely wonderful. You know what that word wonderful means right? Imagine that term, to the hundredth power, no, the thousandth power. No, more than that. Something bigger and deeper. I don’t think you understand. You can’t understand.
A bunch of us are going to do something fun. See you when you get here. Don’t worry about me. I’m definitely not worried about you.