“I’m going to miss you, Erik.”
As he left, reality snuffed out its last cigarette on the dirty concrete sidewalk and gave me a knowing wink. It was well after closing. The bartender with all her perfect curves turned out the lights. I remained in my corner seat, unsure of what came next.
CHAPTER FOUR
A boy and his dog walk the same route every morning for years. One day, the dog pulls the boy in a completely new direction. Although the boy tries to stop her, the shepherd keeps turning down different streets until they come upon an elderly man who has fallen.
Wearing my threadbare green-and-blue-checkered flannel pajamas and lying on the couch in the den overlooking the driveway, I tightly hugged my favorite stuffy, Pandy. Unable to bring myself to rise for a clear view, I hesitantly peeked through the dusty brown blinds.
I was nine when my dad carried our 120-pound yellow Lab to the car. He carefully loaded Blondie, her silky golden fur long faded to a coarse white, into the backseat of our orange, 1970-something Volvo station wagon with the baseball-sized dent in the driver’s side door. My fault. A reminder of the time I tried to play catcher for my sixteen-year-old neighbor. One pitch. He threw way too fast, and I dove out of the way. The car was the backstop. I was lucky the ball didn’t hit the window. Maybe I was luckier it didn’t hit me. As my dad loaded Blondie from the passenger side, I could see her limp body stretched out across the stained canvas seats where my older sister and I always fought.
I remember thinking that I never wanted to sit in that backseat or ride in that car ever again. I also forever wondered how my dad was strong enough to carry Blondie. I feared that someday I would have to do the same thing with a dog of my own. But what if I couldn’t carry her? It was a memory that was with me every time I thought about getting a dog or a car. Can’t get a breed that I can’t carry. Can’t get a car without comfortable back seats.
Even through my heavy tears, I understood why this was happening. Blondie was lifeless long before my dad drove off to the vet. She hadn’t moved for days, had stopped eating, and no longer responded when I gently stroked her face in the special way that only I did. First, I’d put my forehead to hers so we were looking into each other’s eyes. Neither of us would ever blink. My nose would rest on her massive snout, and with both hands, I would slowly stroke the sides of her face. The longer I did this, the harder she would press her forehead back against mine. Regardless of how sick she got, she always pressed back against my forehead. Until she didn’t. She was telling me it was her time.
Before leaving with her, my dad assured me that Blondie wouldn’t feel any pain. She would just go to sleep and be at peace, he promised. He failed to warn me, however, about how much pain I would feel. He failed to tell me how, as Blondie slept forever, I was supposed to sleep ever again. Instead, he just gave me a hug, told me to “take care of Mom,” and drove off. He promised to be back soon. My sister was nowhere to be found. Blondie was gone. My dad didn’t come home for hours. I was on my own. If Joshua Tree was the first time I thought about my own death, Blondie dying was my first real experience with it.
A few years later, my grandmother died and I went to my first funeral. My grandfather’s death soon followed. I remember his funeral because my parents let me wear my soccer uniform. I helped carry the casket as a pallbearer, proudly displaying my familiar number fifteen. I think I must have been thirteen years old. Then there was a series of friends who died far too young. Six or seven friends, none older than twenty, some as young as twelve, lost to disease, drunk drivers, tragic accidents, and suicide. In my high school classmate Alvin Ley’s case, murder at the hands of a drunk uncle.
I didn’t understand death. And I certainly never understood the ability to chalk up a tragedy like the death of my childhood best friend, Jond, to “God calling him home.” Maybe it was cliché, and maybe a result of being around so many tragedies, but “death” became the natural answer to the question of what scared me most. Talking about death made me feel wise beyond my years. Thinking about death made me feel like an “old soul.”
I was thirteen the first time I considered killing myself. Sitting on the end of my bed with a bottle of sleeping pills stolen from my mom’s medicine cabinet, I simply didn’t understand the pain I felt but couldn’t explain. How could I have so many friends yet feel so alone? So lonely? I didn’t know what depression was, but by the time I reached my mid-to-late twenties, those feelings were so much a part of me that I’d feel envious when I heard of someone dying young. Death was no longer something I feared. Life was. Just like Timmy said, I became an expert at deflecting.
“What a tragedy,” people would say when someone died young.
I would nod in agreement while thinking to myself, so lucky.
I was envious because whoever died would never again feel stress, anxiety, shame, loneliness, judgment, fear, or doubt. They would never again feel disappointed. Never again feel pain. They would never again have to feel all the things that haunted me every day. They would never again have to question their decisions. They would never again have to feel like they were living a life completely different from the one they wanted to live. They wouldn’t have to love from afar. Or risk loving right up close. I figured that by dying young, they’d avoid all these feelings and become legendary. Their lives, stuck in time, would forever be remembered in the most perfect light imaginable. Premature death has a way of enhancing a legacy.
It’s too easy to blame it on depression, but somewhere, somehow, I became afraid of risk, afraid of passion, afraid of the things that made life worth living. Afraid of making mistakes. Afraid of myself. Daily, I fantasized about what might happen if I just yanked the wheel of the car while driving the high, cliffside roads near my house. Or maybe if I “just lost my footing” on a hike. It was always a solo accident. I didn’t want anyone else to suffer. I was alone in this life, and I should be alone in my death.
To hide this darkness in my soul, I curated a kind of reputation as a great guy. The go-to for anything. I was there to lend a hand, an ear, or a shoulder. I was the one with the great advice. I was the first to volunteer to help my friends move or to reach for the check. “Let me get this,” I’d insist. I’d justify how we were going to have years together, and they (whomever it was) could just get the next one. They never did. I wouldn’t let them. It was as if it were impossible for me to accept someone else paying. I felt a kind of failure if I let my friends pay. Even when I was broke. Especially when I was broke. It was always in my darkest times when I wore the most ornate masks that fooled the most people.
It’s weird. After years of thinking about it. I was dead.
I.
Was.
Dead.
I was gone. All I wanted to do was pick up another check. I felt guilty for leaving Timmy. I couldn’t even allow myself to think about Jess. I suspected they all wondered if I felt any pain. I mean, that would be one of the first thoughts through my head if the tables were somehow turned. I wished I could tell them that I didn’t. Maybe there’s some kind of peace in knowing that.
In all the time I spent watching the cars at the intersection outside of The Gym, I’d seen plenty of people roll through the stop sign; few just blew through it. But occasionally, every now and then, there would be a guy. Always a guy.
Maybe because it was so late at night, the guy figured nobody would be around.
Maybe he was looking at his phone.
On those rare occasions, this guy never slowed down.
Unable to sleep, and on my walk to the trailhead for a late-night hike, I had stopped in the middle of the crosswalk to look at the moon. It was full. I was able to perfectly capture it as it hung centered above the new paved and painted road. I texted a picture to Jess: “A perfect moon to end a perfect day. I love you. Thank you.” Oh, God. Jess.
That was there.
Now I am here.
Somewhere.
Not even sure where. Not sure how I got here. Like Joshua Tree, I was transported somewhere.
Regardless of religious beliefs, books about near-death experiences, or mushroom-augmented speculation, nobody really knows anything about the afterlife. There are questions, though. Lots and lots of questions:
Is there a heaven?
Is there a hell?
Is there reincarnation?
Can the deceased see what’s happening to those left behind? If so, is there a time limit or statute of limitations on this?
Can those guys on TV really channel the spirits of the dead?
Do you reconnect with all of those you’ve lost?
Do you get to meet God?
Is there a God?
