Breeze, Bleed and Blow me away

Trigger Warning: This story contains themes of death and the afterlife, as well as descriptions of a fatal accident. Reader discretion is advised.

I don’t discriminate against types of wind. I love the wind in all its forms: a gentle breeze, a hurricane, a gust that sends a thousand piercing raindrops at your face. I grew up in New York City and the winters here have brutal winds, howling and wailing like lost souls rushing by. I am not scared of these winds, or the rain, or the cold, but nevertheless, I wear layers of clothing, gloves, and warm fuzzy boots, because my body is still human and I have to protect it. Tomorrow, I am leaving for college and I may not be home for a while yet, so I have walked almost forty blocks from my home to say goodbye to the streets of my city. Though I am bundled up, I leave my face open and my head exposed, allowing the wind to caress my skin and send my hair into a frenzy.

As I step off the pavement to cross the street, a breeze from the left brushes my face, sending hair across my field of vision and city litter flying past. I had already been feeling lightheaded all day, so the breeze practically knocked me over. The next thing I knew, I was light as air and there was none of me left for the wind to harass.

It was an odd revelation, the fact that I was simply nothing and no one anymore. That I wouldn’t have to dress warmly because I didn’t have a body, or that I wouldn’t be expected at college tomorrow, or anywhere else again, for that matter. I didn’t know if I was dead, because I thought death would be more permanent, but somehow I was still here, living and thinking, but not alive. I discovered soon that I was invisible and incorporeal—that when the wind blows, I, too, get swept away. I realize that I am no different from the plastic bags and loose paper flying through New York City streets, well, besides the fact that I cannot be seen, touched, heard, or felt.

As time passed I learned how to ride the winds to go where I wanted. I’d slip into cracks and sail through tunnels where stronger winds couldn’t push me astray. Eventually, I’d end up in that coffee shop I used to frequent, that house where I spent 18 summers, or the high school I thought would be left in my past. Most often, though, I find myself hovering outside my home, trying to piece back my family in a world where I don't exist anymore. I usually find my apartment with the lights dimmed, windows shut and floral curtains drawn. My parents don’t leave the apartment these days, and my dog sits patiently at the front door, waiting for me to come home for our walk. The few times I’ve slipped through a cracked open window, I spend fleeting moments brushing tears from their faces and breezing through my dog's fur, before stronger winds slip into the apartment to blow me out and away.

Sometimes I find myself called to action, like when flying pieces shoot for strangers below, and I swoop down to swat it away, causing even more debris to stir on the pavement. Then, those strangers breathe out a sigh of relief, call it a “close call” and move on with their lives. This is the only thing I can do now, small acts of kindness for oblivious strangers. Besides that, I am just a fly on the wall, watching countless people live out their lives without a real one of my own.

It was another gloomy day in New York and you could tell a storm was coming. The winds were picking up, and obediently, I went with them. I felt again that familiar feeling of raindrops going through me, slowing only for a second before smashing to the floor. There was water flooding the streets now and so much rain you could barely see. Then I felt a little tug of wind pushing me to the right, and in an instant, I was swept away to the Upper East Side.

There, I saw a lone girl fighting the winds to make it home, her umbrella flailing and hair windswept. Though I’d never met this girl before, I felt an undeniable kinship with her, like parts of us were connected in ways even more intimate than two lovers. As I watched her struggle, that unplaceable empathy told me to help, so I quickly came down to her side, still unsure what to do. But that little movement I had made set the violent winds even stronger, and the girl watched helplessly as her umbrella lifted and flew away. I backed away from her, cautiously observing from above, thinking she’d be safer if I just kept my distance. That’s when I heard the groan of steel bars and scaffolding coming loose. Above the roaring winds and rain, she must not have heard it—nor did she hear it when the bars came crashing down on her.

Instinctively I flew above her, not knowing if my hollow form would protect her from anything at all. I felt the bars first crash into me and rip me to bits and pieces, a pain I hadn't even felt when I had had a body. Still, the bars came down on the girl and crushed her frail form beneath. I watched in shock as the blood left her body and washed swiftly away in the rain. I stayed by her side as her body stilled, and her breathing slowed, then stopped. I was overwhelmed with emotion at this stranger's end, with an intensity I hadn’t felt since before my own death. But the emotion was neither grief nor sadness, but rather a feeling of completeness I hadn’t known I was missing - like I could feel the heart in my chest again, hear the metronome of my heartbeat. Of course, I didn’t have a chest, and the heartbeat sounds soon faded, but still, some part of me knew I wasn’t just hollow wind brushing by anymore.

Many years later, as I listened to my parents, who could finally talk about what happened, I realized - that wasn’t a breeze that brushed against me that day, it was a bus skidding uncontrollably on ice. Back then, I wondered why I never felt any pain or had no recollection of what came after. I know now that some other lost soul must have spared me, which I can only hope is what I did for that girl. I also know why that girl felt so familiar, as had a few other people I’d since brushed by on the streets. They are the people who own my heart, brain, liver, kidneys, and everything else I had to offer. The people whose lives I saved when I died, a decision I’d made long before that day. Now, I don’t think of myself as a saint nor a savior, because really, I am just a soul with no body. A soul who stays because my liver still works and my eyes still see, as they likely will for many more decades. Nor do I see this as punishment, as imprisonment or unfinished business—I am here simply because I still have something to give and people to save. I am happy for my organ recipients, they are the reason that I get to stay and live, even in the state that I am. They are the reason I get to watch my family heal, my friends move on and my dog grow old. 

Sometimes, I still feel little parts of me return—not physically, but as that fleeting sense of completeness. I know then that another part of me has lived out its purpose and joined me in death. Perhaps, when every last piece finds its way back, I will finally be whole—and truly gone. No longer roaming with the winds, or softening the blow for those inevitably coming to join me. I do not know when that moment will come, nor if I will be ready to leave when it does. But until then, I will remain one with the breeze, numbing the pain for the people who bleed and softly blowing away when the wind stops calling.