10am Tuesday - Appointment with Death

Death was late for his appointment with me, again. I’d asked him so many times to put me out of my misery, but he’d always come up with some excuse when the time came: “I have a headache”, “The weather is bad”, “Jupiter is not in alignment”. After all the words I’d written in his favor, his continual snubbing made me question the depth of our relationship. And here I was again, waiting, when I knew he wouldn’t come. Well, maybe a part of me thought it would be different this time, based on our last conversation over the phone:

“It’s been five times. How can you forget so reliably?”

“I never forget, but as I’ve said, something always comes up.”

“There’s someone else isn’t there? You’re off killing some pretty blond while I’m stuck here suffering.”

“It’s not like that.”

“So, there is someone. I knew it.”

“They don’t mean anything to me, the others.”

“They? Others? How many have you been killing behind my back?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Jesus. I thought I could trust you.”

“You can.”

“Then why don’t you come when I ask?”

“I will next time.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

So much for the promises of Death - an hour had passed since the time of the appointment. I was fully prepared for my own demise. The bills had been paid. The garbage taken out. Nothing left but to sink away into oblivion. If only he would come. I didn’t usually call him during work hours as he was always in transit and I didn’t want him to have an accident, but I was fed up. I called and was surprised when he answered after only one ring:

“Yes?”

“Where are you?”

“Who is speaking?”

“Your ten o’clock.”

“Ah, apologies, I am late again.”

“Yes, you are. So, what’s your excuse this time? Got a flat tire? Fallen down a well?”

“Family emergency.”

“Oh, sure, that’s a good one. I’m sure Grandma Death appreciates your loving attention.”

“There’s no need to be snide.”

“Well, I’ve tried everything else so why not? And I wouldn’t have to be if you’d just do what we’ve arranged so many times.”

“Are you sure that you are ready?”

“Jesus - this is the sixth time I’ve made an appointment and you’re asking me this now? Does it sound like I’m getting cold feet?”

“Eagerness does not mean you are ready.”

“It’s the very definition of ready!”

“Only for the readiness of spirit. It does not mean you know enough about what is to come to be truly ready to face it.”

“I’m more of a ‘try and see’, kind of guy. I’m sure I’ll learn all I need to know once you do the deed.”

“You will learn nothing. One can only learn of death while alive.”

“Except what it feels like.”

“Wrong. This too you can learn.”

“How? Orchestrate a near-death experience?”

“Nothing so dramatic. Let me ask you something. If, instead of killing you, I offered to blind you would you accept?”

“Of course not.”

“How about if I took your ability to speak?”

“No.”

“Your sense of touch?”

“Depends.”

“Ah, you’d wish I could kill the pain only.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“What about your memories, if I removed those?”

“Depends as well.”

“Only the bad ones I presume?”

“Preferably. Hey, aren’t you supposed to be attending to a family emergency?”

“My other hand is free. Hearing?”

“Definitely not.”

“And yet if you were dead you would be blind, deaf, dumb, have no memory and feel nothing. Is this what you really want despite wishing to keep so much?”

“I can tell you’re not human. Only our emotions matter in the end. The senses are just… tools.”

“Tools that you would miss greatly if they were removed.”

“Well, yes.”

“Here is what I propose. I will come to you now, in your home, and blind you, deafen you, numb you, remove your memories and your ability to speak. Then, after you’ve learnt a bit about death, I will return later to kill you. How does that sound?”

“No thank you. Bloody hell. I forget how cold you are sometimes. So, you’re saying that each part of me, my... conscious experience, that I lose, is a form of death?”

“Yes, well done. This is why you know nothing of death and cannot be truly ready: so much is still extant within you.”

“But what does it matter if I’m ready or not! Once you do it it’s done and I don’t have to think anymore about whether or not I’ll miss being able to think. Just bloody do it. I’ve suffered enough.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. I thought I heard a sigh before he spoke again:

“I don’t usually do this but you’re unusually, and irritatingly, persistent and my patience is near its end. The fact is: you don’t actually wish to die.”

“What? I booked six appointments for it!”

“You did, and I would have come on the first one if you had really meant it.”

“I don’t believe this. Do you even have a grandma?”

“No. And let me just add on a personal level that I don’t respect you.”

“You mean -”

“Yes. I don’t think you are worthy to be killed.”

“You don’t mean it.”

“I do.”

Here his clipped eloquence through the phone started to reverberate with guttural intensity around the room as though he were there with me:

“Come to me when your eyes have dimmed to embers, when your loved ones have all been cut down by my scythe just when you loved them the most, and when the memory of that love has dwindled to ash. Come to me when music falls on ears unhearing and melody bounces within an empty skull, unable to orchestrate even the tying of a shoelace. Come to me when your limbs have been made phantom by the machines of industry, when you are confined to your sick-bed, wracked in agony, organs failing one by one. Come to me with the pain of true loss and I will see myself in you and respect you as my brother. But as you are now: wallowing in comfort, breathing the free air as though it were a cage, thinking blessings are mere tools, thinking life-long inaction a cause for this one final definitive action – come not to me with this. There are a billion more worthy of my scythe than you, who I dare not even call pitiful.”

The reverberations of his voice died down allowing the silence to strike back with equal fervor. I trembled with a deeper shame than I’d ever felt - any sense of pride in myself that remained had been shattered. It was, in fact, dead. I searched the vacuum of my soul and found nothing remotely equating self-esteem. It was then I felt him within me and I finally understood what he had meant.

After the voice that had just spoken, my own, squeaking in comparison like the runt of a rat litter, sounded sacrilegious:

“I... I can feel it - feel you.”

“Good. I’ll be there in five minutes, brother.”