When I Became Death, I Finally Felt Alive

“Please let me die,” I said, staring up at the ceiling with my wrists bound to the hospital gurney. Tears had pooled in my eyes; and my death ended up being as monumental as the word sorry. Apologies were passed around in small groups, ‘sorry’ was given and taken to family and friends, and then like a regret pushed down deep, it was moved away from. My death came and went and my family and former life had to move on too.                                                                  

I had expected no less.

“Please let me die!” I had sobbed, uncurled on my bedroom floor, chest heaving and mouth spread with teeth and spit. The pain thrumming in my head so hard that I could feel the veins pushing against the skin. The empty bottles, fallen allies; and the arms that caught me up and squeezed me tight were only the traps that would later pin me to a bed. I had been forced to lay for days on end, my soul bare to the world and a thin apron covering my form.

It was the obituary for my suicide.                                      

When the time did come, it felt like release. I do not mean to romanticise, nor do I wish to horrify the experience. It was neither good nor bad, my act neither moral or immoral, it simply came like the first cold breeze of winter, with a fall.

My death was painful but quick, nothing for the history books but a young teen doing as many had done before her; taking her life to save herself.

The concrete had been cold when I woke on it; not unforgivingly so, as it had just caught me up in its arms, but solid and wanting. It gave me a hand to my feet as I saw the world around had been sapped like the juice being sucked from an ice-pop, subdued and colourless.

Death had not looked as I had expected. Perhaps not what you would have expected either? He was, in a word, a farmer.

His rough hands rested on jean overall covered hips, and an old cap hid his eyes from the world, having been pulled down low long ago. His face was wrinkled as you might expect Death’s to be, but not from age as much as weather worn, cracking from a sunburnt life. He gave a sigh at seeing me rise, and a shake of the head which caused my teeth to grit and bitterness to coat my throat.

“Well you done it now,” he had said, spitting to the ground, and raising a hand for me to take.

“You’ll let me go? Please, just let me-“ but he hadn’t allowed the words to finish in my mouth before he had taken a firm grip of my chin, his fingertips pressed deep into the skin.

“Now listen here, you got two options, ones like you don’t always mean to go out so quick, some regret it, some don’t. If you’d like I can give you a new meaning, something beyond living or dying, but no take backs this time.” My chin had then been released and the bow of the cap looking at me had given a nod.

It’s been a 1,000 years since then, and I don’t miss my life one bit. I have missed one thing though; and this one thing comes when the nights get long and the deaths lull. He is called Shivam, and he is a Breath-Giver, a Soul-Bringer. Life.

We met on a wet Wednesday afternoon in Toronto, a deer had been hit by a driver. I had stood at the side of the road, the red tail lights of the car gleaming over the beasts sodden body. It’s chest had heaved painfully. Breaths coming wheezy and slow. I remember sighing before I saw him, readying my hand to help the doe’s head and shoulders rise from its corpse when I saw it’s stomach twist oddly. The fawn was born soaked in afterbirth and it’s mothers blood and took me amusingly by surprise.

“Please, let me?” A voice had asked just as I had been considering to help the new born meet its mother, perhaps not in a way either had intended, but stopped at this voice. A young man of Indian decent was stood next to me. Slightly taller than I was, in jeans and old converse, he was lanky and bemused. Drifting his hand downward I watched for the first time a soul being pushing into a body. It was a tender action, soft and subtle like a fish slipping into water. And then the fawn had taken its first breath, and I had met my match.

“I don’t think you can just take one of the dead from me,” I had said, a small rise tugging to the corner of my mouth.

“It’s not yours if it’s breathing.”

“You know, I don’t think it was before you got here.” We had smiled then at one another, and I realised that I didn’t mind the company.

Life and Death do not stick together like glue, we have to circle one another like the sun and moon, only getting brief eclipses to languish in company. We sometimes take this time to talk, to walk; our most common destinations were bridges it seems, often over lakes or ponds, and mainly at night. Sometimes we sat on bridges and laughed till the time came for us to part; else we’d simply follow one another for a short time in the others shadowed duties.

Shivam had a teacher too once, a wild 30 year old woman with skin as dark as coffee and humour just as bitter. He had said she often liked to slap him on the back just as a soul was placed, and laugh at the new soul being dropped into the world with a start.

We visited her a long time ago, when the sun was hot and the desert was such a bright gold you would have thought you were stood upon the sun. We walked and watched as she brought tumbles of sand spiders into the world all at once, and then would teased at our companionship fondly.

“You ought to be off now,” she had made a shooing motion and I had only grinned in response, walking closer. I could see the tiredness around her eyes and suddenly I felt it, the passing. She seemed to have known it was coming too, and rested her weight on me, allowing my hand to hold her arm.

“Is it time now?”

“I think so.”

She looked worried for a moment, regret and longing looking back over her long, long life.

“Please, let me?” And she fell into my grasp as light and easy as soft snow fluttering apart. Her passing affected Shivam greatly, and it soon came time for my teacher to come to me also.

“It’s time,” he had stated, his hat giving me a weary look, before a sunburnt arm was raised for me to take.

I took a firm grip of his hand, allowing the callouses to cut into my skin. Soil smudged from his fingertips to mine, and I took some of his weight by catching up his elbow in my other hand.

“It’s a long hard job, and you best remember it ain’t pretty work.” His voice had been as sombre as ever and all I could give in return was a sarcastic “please!” A smile caught at my lips, and for the first time since out meeting the tip of his cap had risen, and underneath, the stars of a thousand souls had glinted back.

Many years passed with ease, the job palatable and the company good. I watched Shivam grow old in servitude. His work became rigorous; and Life became serious.

But soon the time came when I smiled upon a soul that had met it’s time to pass, and I gave it a choice instead.

“Fancy meeting someone all the way out here? Say, you wouldn’t happen to be looking for a another adventure would you?” The astronaut at the time hadn’t found my humour in the matter, more a perplexity in the situation of a young girl with wildness in her eyes and a loose t-shirt crouched next to him on a planet far from earth. But as I had hoped he took my hand and I led him astray, into the world of Life-Stealing, Soul-Taking, Peace-Giving. Death.  

Shivam didn’t find his replacement for many years. Not because he didn’t want to I don’t think, but because Life was ever present, ever growing, and he chose to fill his hands with the management of it all rather than tutelage.

“Please,” I had almost begged many a time, wanting certain creatures to take his place, to bring into our profession, to bring companionship to us. But he knew better. A new Life was not for us, for our enjoyment, but for the betterment of everything. And it took me by surprise when one autumn day he looked to the dying body of an old Mexican woman and asked me, “please.” I took her soul from her body as quickly as breath from lips and gave him his pupil. I gave him a grandmother who would tenderly follow in his footsteps for hundreds of years to come.

Joy then laughter came back into his life once Old Rosa took in his stead; and more than once he commented on the galaxies than now swam in our eyes like the sands of time filling us up. Our end stretched out then came close all at once. Like the fall of a rain drop. Or the crash of a body to concrete.

We held hands and when the time came I ask, “please, let us die,” to my astronaut. And our souls finally left the world together, in friendship, and at peace.