I die in a sunlit room. Far-off traffic hums through the open window. There is the rustling of leaves. I hear birds chirping. She holds my hand, but I do not have the strength to hold it back. In my final seconds, it feels like I am falling.
In the end, there is no tunnel and no light. I expect nothingness, but it does not come. Instead, I am back in that ward, a little blinded by the sun. Again, I feel the pressure of her hand on mine. She tries to reassure me with that fragile smile. Of what exactly? That it is okay. That she and our son will get by. That I am not abandoning them. This is what she wants me to believe, even if she does not. And again, the final sliver of life drains out of me.
This is not my last death.
Small details change each time: the texture of my sheets, the rhythm of my laboured breath, or the angle at which the morning light filters through the window. Everything is similar, but nothing is the same. I die and die again, and just when it seems that I will do so forever, I find myself not lying flat but upright in the hospital bed. Our son sits on his knees next to my outstretched legs. We haven’t brushed his hair today. He asks me does it hurt? I say only a little. The bitter hint of cleaning agents in the air makes me nauseous.
I remember this moment. But this is not what I felt. This is not how I lived it. And yet there is nothing I can say or do that wasn’t said or done. This is how my son remembers it, I realise. And I do not feel my own despair, but his, steeped in the knowledge that this is the last time he hears my voice.
And then I am back to dying. I do not get used to it.
As each friend, colleague, and acquaintance learns of my death, I die as they imagine me to have died. They recall my gradual decline and the shock of how thin my face has become. The agony and despair and the fading hope of it all colour every memory.
But then fragments of relief flare up. A burst of laughter echoes through the room. We watch the wind blow over a field of wheat from the balcony. An embrace that feels like there’s some empty space in me that is being filled. Memories in which I am not consumed by sickness reach me like sunlight on a cold body.
It becomes rare for me to revisit the hospital. I am not remembered by the pain and discomfort of my death. There are Christmas dinners, birthdays, and big nights out, but mostly it’s the small things people remember, like when we sit together at the kitchen table, and I sip tea from my red mug and notice that it is a little cracked at the edge. I become aware of details I did not see at the time. But others did.
Often, I relive no more than a flash of recollection: a word, a gesture, or a faint smile. I appear as a father, a friend, and sometimes just as an acquaintance. Those who disliked me do not think about me at all, it turns out.
It is my wife who misses me most. It seems, for a while, that I only spend time with her. She recounts a thousand little instances that I failed to appreciate in life. She thinks back to our first dates and to my clumsy nervousness. She falls in love with me anyway. There are also memories of our fights and struggles that I dread to revisit, in which we shout and cry and say hurtful words, but even these are remembered with affection. And then we are a family. And there are first steps and first words and sleepless months recalled too fondly. All of this happens in an unbroken string of reminiscence.
And then I am never remembered as a husband again.
The years I got to spend with my son were few. The years he remembers are fewer. He doesn’t know how plagued with doubt I was. Instead, I get to be kind. I get to make him feel safe and at home, though the ache of my absence never quite goes away.
I keep returning to this moment. He is sitting on my lap at the table. It is cold. Steam rises from the red mug in front of us. He opens his mouth and cups his hands, breathing into them. I uncurl his fingers with mine and guide them to the warm ceramic, feeling the back of his hands on my palms as I wrap them around the mug. He looks up at me and smiles, the tip of his tongue pointing through the gap between his front teeth.
There are memories that never happened, imagined by grandchildren who have only seen me in photographs and sometimes forget my name. It is not so much the past that is being recalled as the idea of it. Soon, I am only remembered in the vaguest sense, as a presence in a past life.
It is all about to end. I can feel it. But then one last moment comes to me with clarity.
It is a sunny day in March. The garden is peppered with blooming snowdrops, watered by the melting snow. My wife is here. I hold her close to me. Our son is barely tall enough to reach my hip. He leans against my knee and says something that makes us all laugh. We are huddled together so the three of us can fit into the frame of the photograph. This is the last time anybody remembers me.
It is not so bad, being forgotten. There are many of us here.
