The End of the Line

“You’re the end of the line.”

I remember my brother’s comment the day we picked Dad’s burial plot. It seemed that our squares were filling up with grandparents gone. Now another generation was passing from this world. My brother and I never had children, and as the youngest, I was the end of our family line.

Now another generation has passed. This world is fading away and growing dim. I’ve bid them all farewell and now, in my brother’s self-fulfilling prophesy, I follow.

I see the light beyond, but I’m not ready to go. I’m tired of this world, of things falling apart, of people coming and going, of the constant struggle, of the ebb and flow. I’m ready for the eternal reward, but something feels unfinished. There’s one last thing I need before moving on.

I’d blame defense mechanisms, but is that a factor when you no longer have a brain? Does spirit have imbalances? I no longer feel that old anxiety that used to plague me or sadness about my passing. Neither do I feel happy, excitement, or the relief they say death brings. Something is missing. Something’s out of place.

I remember admonishing Mom when she used to come out here in the years after Dad passed. “He’s not really there. Walk out of there while you can!” I said as she arranged poinsettias on his headstone on December 23. It was delayed because she didn’t want to go alone, my brother wouldn’t go, and I had COVID and just tested negative for the first time in a week. I remember her asking “Don’t you have anything to say to your father?” and I held up my arms and said “I got COVID and did not die! Yay, science!”

It seemed funny at the time. I wondered about my great-grandmother, who fell victim to the 1919 Flu Pandemic. I never knew her – my grandfather was four when she passed – so I have no first-hand knowledge of her personality or character. Granddaddy told me she was a gentle soul. I imagine my dark humor and the fact that I was a science fiction and mystery writer would confuse her. A woman like me would be foreign to her. Then again, this world would be foreign to those who left in centuries past, just as it became foreign to me over the decades. The world may turn, but it also evolves into complex multiverses that interweave, interconnect, and intertwine in eternity.

I lost that battle. I did die this time, and now I can’t walk out of here. I see the stones, markers for generations of my family. There will be no more. I leave no legacy, other than my work and extended family that doesn’t live in town. They live upstate, nearly two hours away, and probably don’t remember how to get here. Why would they come back with no living relatives from this side of the family? No poinsettias for me. No heartfelt admissions. Not even silly proclamations. I’m sure my niece and great-nephew and niece will miss me, but I guess that second death of being forgotten by the world will come sooner rather than later for me. My loss is a second death to the previous two generations of my family. With no descendants, I’m as good as gone in reality and memory.

Why am I here? What am I looking for? Aren’t all purposes not fulfilled? Isn’t my work done? My great contributions to the planet complete? All potential fulfilled? Why can’t I rest?

I remember my own great aunt, buried near the fence. I never knew my great-uncle. He got hit by a train fifteen years before I was born and, ironically, a train track runs on the other side of that fence. I wonder if this was a joke to the family or if life itself is the joke. She doted on me and my brother since she never had children. Hers was the first death I experienced, lost to dementia. I didn’t understand it at the age of eight, but grew to know the beast of grief better than I wanted as others passed from this plane. I wonder what my great-nephew and niece will take from my passing. They have the advantage of processing it as an adult. If that is an advantage. I wonder which grief was worse: the grief of my grandparents passing as a child and preteen, who didn’t know what I didn’t know, or the grief of a middle-aged woman, who knew exactly what it was and didn’t like it. Grief was the greatest pain of life. Not illness, injury, betrayal, or the various dramas of relationships, circumstances, reality, and fate. It was grief, the insidious severing of love that could never be mended in the world. That hurt the worst, even more than dying itself.

That is why you’re here.

My vision sweeps around as a glow surrounds me. I can not only see the names on the stones but the people whose stories they tell. It’s all in the dash between the birth date and death date. Entire existences, lives, and realities, are all represented by a dash. To the living, the dash minimizes. Here, it’s definition. It’s clarity. Those dashes connect to all of the others, weaving a tale across space and time that can only be experienced in the fullness of reality. That is what connects all levels of existence. I long to connect to it as the love reconnects, sealing broken bonds and pulling me back to those whom I haven’t seen in so long. Now, I understand.

The purpose of life, the whole of reality, the meaning of existence, is love. It is all. It is immortal. It is eternal. My cycle can only complete to reforge those bonds and make me whole in eternal rest if I sever the tie to this world. My wholeness means the ones left behind must work through their grief, in their way, to evolve the love I gave in this world to a place where all will be forged anew.

A car pulls into the cemetery, stopping by the family square. A young woman steps out, holding two bouquets of white roses. I see the face of my great niece, studying my stone as she sets the roses in the vace against my stone. She sniffs and swipes her nose with the sleeve of her flannel shirt that reminds me so much of Dad’s work shirts from so long ago.

“Thank you, auntie. I will miss you and your spunky spirit.” She laid her hand against my stone, uttering a phrase I said often in my own life. “I’ll see you on the other side.”

The light rose as I watched her walk to the square next to the fence, setting the other roses at my great aunt’s marker. “Thank you too, for inspiring her to be the best great-aunt. I only knew her through you, but it was enough to know that you were awesome.”

The clouds overhead pass as she walks to her car and settles in, wiping snot and tears from her face before taking a deep breath and driving away. I feel a weight lift and my spirit expands. Leave while you can. There’s a world waiting for you.

Another world is waiting for me, and it’s time to go. I know what meaning binds and unites us. Light engulfs me. I see them now, the generations past, beckoning me home. I take a last look at blue skies and green trees as I leave this place and pass into the pureness of creation.