The Melting Pot

I woke up outside of my car with the feeling that something was licking my face. I struggled to open my eyes, to move. My body didn’t feel like my own anymore. Signals from my brain weren’t having any impact.

‘Stop licking my face! Your breath really stinks!’ I thought.  

Whatever it was, it was sitting right on my chest, very persistently licking my mouth. It took all my effort, but I managed to open my eyes. The licking stopped. I was staring at an enormous black cat with golden eyes.

Where’s the deer?

It all happened so fast. One second, I was driving to work, early in the morning, thinking about what my day would be like. The sun was just starting to crest the horizon on my right, and on my left was thick forest. Suddenly, a deer came from beside my car and jumped directly in front of me. There was no time to stop, it was as if the thing had thrown itself against my windshield in a suicide mission.

For an instant, time stopped, right before impact, with the deer caught in my headlights. I could see the whites of his eyes and his flared nostrils. His fur was clumped with moisture from the morning dampness in the forest. We stared at each other, a mutual understanding of what was inevitably about to happen.

And then time caught up in a hurry. I heard sounds that I didn’t know metal could make as the car rolled over and down the hill. Scraping, screeching, and crushing sounds. Add to that the sporadic clinking and splintering of glass breaking like cymbals in an orchestra.

The cat gingerly stepped off my chest and sat beside my head. Much better, I felt like I could take a full breath.

I looked around. I was at the bottom of a ravine, about 20 feet from what used to be my car. I still couldn’t feel my body. Looking at the condition of my car, it was probably better that I couldn’t feel anything.

I didn’t know how I was going to get out of there. The ravine was too steep to get back up to the road. And then I noticed the cat, slowly walking away from me. It kept looking back at me as if I was supposed to follow.

I reasoned that it must be going somewhere more civilized than this, so I tried to get up. But still, my body wasn’t responding. Then I heard a voice in my mind say: ‘Stop trying with your legs. Use your mind.’

Unable to move my mouth, I answered back in my head with: ‘Who is this?’

Instantly I heard back: ‘I don’t have to answer that. Just do as I say. Forget your physical body. Use your mind.’

I had no idea what that meant, to use my mind. I tried using my mind to make my legs move, but that didn’t work. Instead, I tried to just imagine rising and going toward the cat. In my mind’s eye, I could see myself effortlessly approaching the cat. I pictured floating toward it, as if I was becoming the space between us.

As soon as I imagined this, I felt myself being drawn up and out of my body through the top of my head. I continued to rise slowly, and I could feel myself being pulled upward. It felt like gravity was reversed, or like a centrifugal force was being applied vertically. And then as clear as day, I heard: ‘That’s it.’

Suddenly I was beside the cat, and like dolphins swimming at top speed through the surf, we were cutting through the air, dodging trees in the forest. And then the trees turned to fields, and the fields to clouds. I realized we were high above the earth now, just me and the cat. I thought to ask: ‘Where are we going? Am I dreaming?’

The cat laughed in my head. A full, unashamed laugh that was contagious, although I didn’t understand what was so funny.

The cat finally answered, again in my head: ‘I must apologize. I thought you knew. I thought you saw yourself.’

‘Saw myself what?’ I wondered.

The cat, hearing my thoughts, answered: ‘Saw your body. Outside of the car. After the accident.’

I was glad that the cat was talking slowly because it wasn’t sinking in very quickly. Everything felt wrong. Off. I was seeing but I couldn’t see. I was hearing the cat’s voice but there was no sound. And I was moving fast above the earth when I couldn’t feel my body.

‘The accident?’ was all I could connect.

We stopped moving abruptly. The black cat with the golden eyes grew to elephant size before me. Sensing my pain and confusion, he cradled me in his warm fur. He soothed and comforted me like a mother would a lost child. He was helping me to grieve my death.

After some time had passed – it could have been 5 minutes or 5 hours – the cat said that we should continue our journey.

‘Where are we going?’ I thought to ask.

‘To the melting pot, of course,’ the cat answered in my head, shrinking back to normal size.

He turned to continue our travels through the sky, and I automatically followed, not that I had much of a choice. What was I going to do, find my way back to my dead body and broken car? We picked up speed.

‘What’s the melting pot?’ I wondered, forgetting that the cat could hear every thought in my head.

‘Everyone’s there. You’ll see.’

‘Who’s everyone?’

We climbed higher and higher, and as we did, we grew smaller and smaller. The stars were brighter, and they seemed to hum around me. They felt warm.

‘Anyone who has passed on before you is there.’

I processed this. ‘So, my mother is there? My grandparents?’ I felt my excitement grow. Was I really going to see my mother again?

‘Yes, they’re there. You stay in the melting pot as long as someone down below has memories of you. Your mother died what, 10 years ago? Your grandparents, too, roughly. They’d still be there, for sure. The average is 100 years. But mind you, some never leave. Like Aristotle. He’s still there, the blabber-mouth-know-it-all. But I’m off my point, now. Where was I?’

I barely heard the cat. I was thinking about what I would say to my mother. I had so many things to tell her. Things about what I wish I had done when she was still alive, and things that I had done since her death that she would be proud of or surprised by. I couldn’t wait to get to the melting pot.

We kept shrinking, but it didn’t matter because there was nothing around us but tiny points of white light. They were everywhere.

‘What happens when no one has memories of you anymore?’ I asked in my head.

‘Then you begin to leave the melting pot. At that point, you’re not needed anymore to welcome new arrivals.’

The lights around us became so numerous that there was as much white as black. Sometimes the white looked like stars against a black background, and sometimes the stars looked black against a white background.

‘Where do you go when you leave the melting pot?’ I thought.

‘Every time a baby is born, their soul is made from a piece that is taken from the melting pot. It is the combination of many individuals in different proportions. This ensures that everyone born is unique, and yet made from pieces of others before them.’

I couldn’t tell if we were travelling anymore, nor if we were still shrinking. The white stars had taken over my field of vision and there were only a few specs of black. I felt like we were close.

‘So, who are you, then?’ I outright asked the cat.

‘I’m your chaperone, is all. To get you from down there to up here. You see me as a cat, formed from the image of your first childhood pet. Others see me differently.’

The white had completely taken over my vision. In fact, it was blinding. I couldn’t open my eyes it was so bright. And the pain! It felt like acid-tipped daggers were screwing their way into my eye sockets. Where was the cat?

“Lucy, can you hear me?” I heard a loud male voice, close to my ear.

My tongue felt like it had ballooned to occupy my entire oral cavity. It was too thick and heavy to work. I groaned.

“She’s regaining consciousness!” I heard a female voice yell loudly. “Get the chopper!”

The male voice was soothing near my ear, reassuring me that everything would be okay. It didn’t matter what he said. I felt like I almost got to visit the melting pot. And I knew that no matter what happened, it would be okay.