The Weight of Dirt

There’s a split second—just a heartbeat, really—when I feel weightless, hanging in the air like a bird without wings. The world around me is moving, spinning in slow motion, glass shards glinting like stars. I see the road rushing up toward me, asphalt rough and dark, illuminated by the fading sunlight. In that final moment, I remember thinking, So this is how it ends?

I don’t feel the impact. I hear it, a wet, sickening thud, the crunch of bones and metal and flesh, but the pain doesn’t hit. My body crumples into a heap against the pavement, and everything around me goes quiet. The world is still, as if the universe is holding its breath. I try to breathe, but my lungs feel frozen. There’s no air, just this cold, suffocating emptiness.

I’m lying there, staring up at a sky that’s blurred, fading fast. I feel a strange lightness, like I’m drifting away from my own body, watching from a distance. People gather around, faces swimming in and out of view. They’re looking down at me, eyes wide with horror, mouths moving as they shout to each other, but their voices are muffled, as if I’m underwater. Their words are lost, leaving me only with the faint echo of urgency, of fear.

Someone kneels beside me, pressing two fingers to my neck. I can feel the coolness of their skin, but it’s distant, a sensation slipping away with each passing second. They’re talking about me now, but not to me, and that’s when it hits: I’m not part of this world anymore. I’m on the other side of some invisible line, hovering in that strange space between life and whatever comes next.

There’s a growing darkness at the edges of my vision, creeping in like ink spilled across a page. And as the darkness swallows me, I find myself sinking, not just into the pavement, but somewhere deeper.

I become aware of motion again, though it’s not under my own control. I’m being lifted, hands steady but impersonal, and there’s a zip, like the sound of someone closing a suitcase. Darkness encloses me, and I realize I’m in a bag—my body tucked away, zipped up, sealed from the world.

I’m in transit now, bumping along the back of an ambulance, and the sensations are strange. It’s a smooth, rhythmic jostling, and I can feel each sway, each turn, even though there’s no one to ground me here, no heartbeat to measure the time. I don’t know how long I’m in the ambulance, only that the voices around me are calm, measured. They discuss me clinically, words like “fatal” and “trauma” tossed back and forth, detached and professional, as if they’re talking about someone who never really existed.

Through the thick haze of my awareness, I hear one of them say, “Poor guy didn’t stand a chance.” It’s as if they’re summing up my whole life in that single, dismissive sentence.

I catch glimpses, brief impressions of movement from a world that’s no longer mine. One of the paramedics pulls back the zipper for a moment, checking me, maybe out of some automatic sense of duty. I stare up at his face—a face I don’t recognize, yet it’s somehow comforting. There’s a familiarity in his expression, a quiet respect as he examines me, and I find myself wanting to say something, to acknowledge him. But my voice is gone, the words swallowed in the silence.

The ambulance slows, then stops. I feel the shift, hear the click of the locks, and hands lift me again, transferring me out of the ambulance and into… somewhere colder.

The cold is sharper now, biting, like steel pressed to skin. I’m in a different kind of darkness—one that’s vast and sterile. I can slightly hear the hum of fluorescent lights. I sense movement around me, but this isn’t the careful handling of paramedics. These hands are deliberate, detached, as if my body is just another item on the day’s checklist.

They’ve laid me out on a stainless-steel table, under blinding lights that make me feel exposed, naked. I’m aware of every inch of my body, more so now than when I was alive. I feel the cool surface against my back, the way my limbs are stiff, unyielding, yet somehow heavy and foreign.

Then, there’s the first incision.

The blade slides through my skin with practiced ease. There’s no pain, only the sensation of something deep and fundamental being undone. It’s a strange, unsettling feeling, as if they’re peeling away the last remnants of who I was, layer by layer. They open me up, their hands moving methodically, cataloging, inspecting. I’m dissected and displayed, my secrets no longer mine, each piece of me laid bare under the harsh, unforgiving light.

I watch as they remove my organs one by one, placing them on a scale, measuring, recording. I almost want to laugh at the absurdity of it—this meticulous cataloging of what’s left of me, as if the sum of my life could be weighed, measured, and analyzed. They lift my heart, a lifeless piece of tissue, holding it up to the light. There’s a pause, a moment of stillness, as if they’re searching for something there, some hint of the person I used to be. But it’s just a muscle now, devoid of any of the passion, the pain, the memories that once made it beat.

As they continue, I feel myself slipping further away, my identity fading with each cut, each sample taken. It’s as if they’re carving away the last of my attachment to this body, leaving me weightless, untethered. I am nothing but an observer now, watching the dismantling of a vessel I once called home.

Finally, they finish. They stitch me up with rough, perfunctory stitches, their job done, my secrets recorded and filed away. I’m zipped back up in the bag, sealed off from the sterile world of steel and light. But this time, there’s a new stillness—a sense of finality.

I don’t know how much time has passed when I’m moved again, this time into a different kind of quiet. The cold sterility of the autopsy room has been replaced by a softer touch, a gentler kind of handling. They’ve dressed me, combed my hair, arranged me to look… presentable. As if I’m a mannequin, arranged just so for the occasion. There’s a sense of reverence, of care, as if they’re trying to return something human to me, to make me look like who I was.

My eyes are closed, but I feel the weight of their stares, the tension that fills the room. This place, with its heavy velvet drapes, dim lights, and the smell of lilies and roses, is a world that feels both familiar and foreign. I remember attending wakes, the silence thick with grief, the air punctuated by soft whispers, the quiet shuffle of feet. And now, here I am, the one they’re gathering around, their voices lowered out of respect for the body I used to be.

They’re here—my family. Faces drift past in the haze of my awareness, first my wife, then our children. My wife, dressed in black, stands beside me, her hand shaking as she brushes it over mine. I want to tell her I’m still here, to feel the warmth of her touch, but there’s only that distant awareness, the sense that she’s searching my face for something—some last fragment of me that might still be left.

My children stand nearby, looking small, pale, unsure. They’re too young to understand all of this. My daughter fidgets, her eyes darting away from my face as if looking at me is something she can’t quite manage. My son clutches his mother’s hand, staring at me with a look that’s half confusion, half sorrow, like he’s not sure what to make of this silent, unmoving version of his father.

My wife leans closer, whispering something that I can’t make out, something meant just for me. A final goodbye, perhaps, a wish, a memory, a promise. Her hand lingers, gripping mine as if she can hold onto me, keep me here for just a moment longer. But I can’t reach back. I’m nothing more than a memory now, a figure in a suit, someone they once knew.

As they step back, their faces blur, lost in the dim light. People move past, friends, family, each one pausing to say their own quiet farewell, their words fading like echoes in the back of my mind. They all share fragments of stories, laugh softly, and cast their eyes over my face as if searching for the person I once was. Their voices are like ghosts, swirling around me, half-real, slipping further away with each passing second.

With every word, every tear, I feel myself fading, becoming less of who I was. I am no longer a father, a husband; I am an image of something lost, leaving behind only the hollow space where I once existed.

There’s a muffled shuffling, quiet murmurs, a sense of movement. I am surrounded by polished wood, satin-lined, as if they want to make this final resting place seem as comfortable as possible. But the quiet is thick, heavy, broken only by the hushed voices of those gathered around me, just outside this narrow box.

I feel the shift, the slow, steady rocking as they lift me, carry me, as if I’m something fragile. The warmth of sunlight seeps through the wood—faint, barely there, but it’s enough to remind me of the life I’m leaving behind. I can hear the soft, broken weeping of my wife, the sniffles of my children, those faint, raw sounds of grief that pierce through the coffin like whispers of everything I can no longer reach.

They speak about me now, voices softened by the wood and fabric, filtered through layers of earth and air. I hear pieces of their words—devoted, kind, father, husband—and they feel like echoes, distant and hollow. Each word, each memory, is a thread to the life I once had, tugging at the edges of who I was.

There’s a final pause, a moment of silence that stretches on, filling the air with a weight I can almost feel pressing down on me. My wife speaks last, her voice quiet but strong, as if she’s finding the courage in her grief to say goodbye. Her words are muffled, almost lost to me, but the warmth, the love in her voice is unmistakable, even through the barrier between us. It’s the last trace of her that I’ll ever know.

Then, the ropes tighten, and I begin to sink. Slowly, steadily, I’m lowered into the earth. There’s a heaviness, a finality, as if the world is pulling me down, grounding me in its embrace. I feel each tremor, each shift, as they begin to shovel the dirt over me, layer by layer, the muffled thud of earth against wood growing louder, pressing closer.

Darkness settles in, thick and endless. The last sounds fade—the voices, the weeping, the murmured prayers—until there’s nothing left but the weight of the dirt, the silence, and the slow, steady pull of the earth. I am leaving them, leaving the world above, sinking into a place where time loses meaning and memory begins to blur.

And here, wrapped in the quiet and the dark, I start to understand this is where I become part of something larger. The earth holds me now, cradling me in its heavy, steady embrace, a place where everything ends and begins again.

Time slips away here. I don’t know how long I’ve been lying in the dark, surrounded by layers of earth, held down by the weight of dirt and silence. There’s no sun, no sound, no sense of the world above. Just an endless, quiet descent, as my body, once so familiar, begins to change, to loosen its grip on itself.

I feel it—the slow, inevitable breaking down, the surrender. It begins as a tingling at the edges, a sensation that’s almost alive, like a faint hum that builds and builds, transforming what’s left of me. The earth is taking me in, pulling me closer, piece by piece. Tiny creatures burrow and crawl, finding their way through the fabric, exploring the new landscape of my skin. They’re quiet, purposeful, like caretakers in the dim light of this final place.

Roots twist and grow around me, gentle and patient, reaching into the spaces I once filled. They seem to sense me, threading through the cracks and crevices, binding me to the soil. I feel their pull, a slow, steady integration, as if the earth itself is embracing me, weaving me into its endless cycle. I am no longer distinct, no longer separate; I am becoming part of something vast and ancient.

The days and nights pass, though I no longer sense them. My edges blur, my shape fades, my form dissolves, and I am scattered into the soil, a part of the ground beneath me, feeding the roots that will one day become the trees above. I can almost see it now—a tree, strong and tall, reaching toward the sky. My essence flows through its roots, rising through its trunk, stretching out into leaves that will sway in the wind, catching sunlight, breathing life.

And in that moment, I realized I am not lost. I am here, part of the earth, part of the cycle, returning to the world in a form that will go on long after memory fades.

I am no longer a body. My form, my boundaries, have dissolved, scattered into the soil, feeding the life around me. There’s peace here, in this strange, quiet unity. I am both everywhere and nowhere, woven into roots, dissolved into dust, breathed out in the soft rhythm of nature’s pulse.

Seasons will pass—autumn leaves will fall and decay, winter’s cold will settle, spring will bring new growth. In some small, quiet way, I am part of it all. My atoms, my essence, will travel, feeding trees, nourishing grass, drifting into rivers, carried on the wind. I will be everywhere, present in the rain and the soil, in the quiet strength of trees reaching toward the sun.

I realize now that I am part of something far beyond myself. Death, I see, isn’t an end but a return, a reunion with the earth and the life that endures. And in that return, I am finally at peace, a quiet presence in the vastness of everything.