Lonely in the Midst

The past is looking yonder at the present with fading eyes and envy. It hates the latter’s gut. The present is always looking elsewhere but the past. As if it hasn’t been there for it.

The present looks over its shoulder to the past in contempt and to the future with fear, uncertainty and appreciation. But it never knew what that appreciation is for.

The future will not see them both, past and present. It only looks to its own face with admiration. He thinks them as an unclean, lacking luster and vision, chastity in everything.

However it is a love-hate existence between the three. They are continuum of one another with a blurred interface. A two dimensional interface missing its thickness. It is like Stephen King’s the Four Past Midnight. It was amazing how the past was consumed by what King called the Langoliers. Everything dissolving into oblivion with great big-bang and collapse inaudible to us.

There, he is laying at the edge of the present, just between the fine-line overlooking the horizon of the unknown land called tomorrow. There is enormous abyss between. Is the future, the all-knowing future, mocking over us all? We are pulled back by the past with its sticky mud of what we could have done better. We push against the solid wall of the present to make dreams come true in hope of receiving the unknown future with bravery and ovation.

The blurred hospice blue gown of the nurse approached the bed to his right. She is checking something somewhere over his head. He had stopped speaking for how many days God knows. The respirator covered half of his face. Made of sticky plastic it is bruising the skin at his nose and chin. And it looks murky with evaporated steam. “He is stabilizing … He is going to make …” She is talking to an invisible person behind her. Am I? Fools. He only wanted to talk to his loved ones. Just ones before the inevitable comes.

The Langoliers comes back to his thought again. The langoliers that eats up the tread that holds the past, the present and the future.

He tries to weigh the years against the contributions he gave back to family, friends and society. Was it worth it? Who is the judge and the jury? There is a lot of it to weigh. The Commandments said Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou … Is the afternoon coming to an end? The windows are growing dark against the white washed color of the wall.

… Man wants to live to eternity. He wouldn’t want to be forgotten and come to nothingness just only because he died. Those many years of rearing the family with love, knowledge and experience cultivated so far, projects that solved society’s immediate problems, would they be eaten up, crumble and changed into nothingness by … by …

Now the room is completely lit by the overhead light with the window frame going completely black. Someone’s life support machine hummed in unison with his own at his bed. No one is allowed into this seclusion. No family, no friends, and no humans save the medical staff covered from head to toe with medical grade double shield the moment they entered the premises. So, it is loneliness in the midst of multitudes. The glass pane separates the healthy visitors from the contagion patient. Nobody hugs nobody as had been just few months ago.

He remembered some more lines from his slowly fading store of memory. It was Don Williams “You’re My Best Friend”

               You’re my bread when I’m hungry

               You’re my shelter from troubled winds

               You’re my anchor in life’s ocean

               But most of all you’re my best friend

It is an impossible thought to discover that all the love, the vitality, the promise of things to happen would turn to ashes by a transformation called death. Once he heard Neil de Grass say that it is as we had never been there before the time of our birth. As there were no life before birth, so is after death. There is just nothing. “Get over it …” he had said.

So, now laying on bed with the last beats of life ticking away he thought of that uncertain end. We all think death by itself is the most painful experience in life. But he came to realize that death is just a transformation from being to nonbeing. And to experience pain one has to be alive. Thus, in death there should be no pain. May be the pain must emanate from the knowledge that all those good memories, hopes and dreams would just go into nonexistence with no trace left behind.

Something began to beep loudly and erratically over his head from one of the machines. He is feeling the strain from the half consumed lungs in his chest cage. He wished he would be the last one to be taken away by this eating virus.

He was against all the commotion about social distancing, wearing masks and washing the hands now and again. He even thought of it as against his personal liberty. But now he knew better. Better knowing than never at least to the remaining humanity. What good is liberty if it cannot protect loved ones?

Nurse, or nurses rushed into the room. Looked over him hesitantly. He has his optical capacity though blurred and disorienting at times. He had never worn glasses to read. His eyes were sharp. His eyes could have helped someone if he had donated it when he died. He didn’t. It is one more regret to die with. I will donate if can speak again. He promised himself.

One more thing amazed him irrespective of the odds he is in. His thinking faculty is coherent so far. He can read his pain in several parts of his body. He is able to remember Stephen King’s book he had read many years ago. The song from Don Williams was so old. He had given the cassette to his first love when he was in the final years of high school. Does a brain finally die after making sure that every other organ has failed? The ventilator was installed on him for the last two, three days ago. He was not sure but it doesn’t matter.

The only thing he craving for is what time of day it would be. It never have been a big deal before. But now, for no special reason he wanted badly to know. There is no wall clock in his line of vision. Why did he wanted to know the time? Where will he go and do if he knew? Is loneliness has time as one of its dimensions? The other patient eight feet away never stirred for a bit since they were moved to the ICU. At least he can comprehend that. Isn’t this a sign of a working faculty of a brain? He has got some more days then before his farewell.

He felt drowsy, a sure sign sleep is overpowering him. It must be his inability to breath by his own lungs and the amount of thinking he has had since this loneliness struck. Will this extend into tomorrow …? Will there be a tomorrow for hi…? What would they say when they told them they cannot take the body? What …?

The next morning, in the early hours of the day, five people stood several yards away at the back of the hospital docking area. The wife and her three daughters with one more relative are wiping their eyes with a tissue paper. No word is exchanged between them. They just stood quietly contemplating the amount of void created by this lose.

There is a twelve wheeler refrigerator truck it’s back opened wide to receive the next statistics. Next number in the data of the pandemic. The truck can accommodate no more than four or five bodies as seen from the remaining shelves inside. Another truck filled to the brim was pulling out of the area to dispose of its dead somewhere.

The loneliness has ended for him. Has the nothingness began?