THE WARMTH OF DEATH'S COLD HANDS

I had often wondered what it would feel like to die. 

I even thought about it as I let my hand and what it held fall and then stared into the darkness of the night above me in my room. 

All that lives, must die. Even I. 

And what does Death feel like when it pays you a visit? 

What do you feel when your body goes cold and you slip out of consciousness? At what point in existence does consciousness begin for the living thing—in the moment the fertilised egg takes its place in the womb, or just when you are pulled out of that sac and all of its fluids into the big, wide, evil, wicked world? 

In the midst of asking myself these questions without any answer to them, I fell asleep, and in the midst of my sleep, I had a dream. 

In this dream, there were flashing images of core memories I did not know I could remember. 

There was the first one, of a nurse holding me carefully in her hands and beaming at me, saying words I could only hear as a distant, unintelligible echo. Then she handed me to my mother, and how young she looked at that moment, even younger than I had ever seen her. Tears fell out of her eyes, but she was smiling. 

That memory faded, and there was another when I could not have been up to a year old. It was a view of my hands, with my eyes staring precisely at the lines etched into my palms, and wondering what they were, what purpose they served, and if others had them. When I looked away from my palms, I saw that I was sitting atop a high stool in our old dining room. The height was uncomfortable for me, and I tried to climb down from it. 

Alas, my hand missed its hold with the first move and I fell. 

It was like falling from the highest of points, and panic seized me as my body reached near the ground. Then, something caught me by the foot and pulled me up, and I began to cry in relief. 

When my tears fell off, I saw that it was my father that had caught and saved me from falling. His heavy moustache sat above his lip, and he was speaking to me in words I could not hear too. 

I could only hear that distant echo, the sound of his voice comforting. 

Then that memory faded away too, and suddenly I was older, looking down upon a pair of white sneakers covering my feet as my mother taught me to tie my shoelaces. This was one I could clearly remember, and I laughed at the memory even though the sounds in it were another unintelligible echo. Oh, Mother. 

Then that one faded away and then I was far older, staring at my naked body. 

At my genitals, precisely. 

I was alone, and my hands touched myself rhythmically, enjoying the sensation that I was feeling. The ecstasy was like climbing up a ladder—and going higher and higher and higher until… 

Then the memory faded and opened unto another one, one that haunted me almost all the time. It was the first time I had ever seen a dead person, a man who had been hit by a car as me and my mother stood on one end of the road. I remembered the blood and brains from his split-open head and how his eyes stayed lifelessly open, while my mother's scream cut through the distant echo of sounds as she scurried to shield me from that which I had already been exposed to. She was seconds late. 

I had seen it all, and it was here, in this wonderful dream of my memories. 

The memory faded and there came one that had brought me pain at the time and every time I remembered it—my father's death. The distant echo was in the background as his coffin was lowered into the ground, and I remembered staring at my hands again. 

They were familiar at that moment, so oddly familiar. 

Then there was a happier memory, the first time I made love. 

Me and my partner were best friends, and we set to fulfilling an earlier pact to make sure that we had our first make out session with one another the moment we reached the legal age. I relived being oddly interested in the sheen of the luxurious hair that covered their genitals, and the pleasure as we met each other. 

Ah. Ecstasy. The kisses, spitty and inexperienced, but filled with love. 

Then a final one that had happened only that evening as I spoke to them and they told me they were getting married with their voices in the same distant echoes in the background. I relieved the pain that I felt just as I did the pain at my father's death, or the confusion as I set my eyes upon my first dead body. 

I had hoped that the memory of that first lovemaking session of ours would mean something to them, but they had decided that it better to leave me, while I held on to the memory in this dream that I now saw. 

It was a most bizarre dream, of me reliving my memories, yet I felt happiness—the kind of happiness one does at staring through their photo album, except that this was the happiest I had ever been, with relief flowing through every fibre in me. 

I could not fathom why I was so happy, but I rose from my bed and moved to dance and jump about over the intensity of this happiness when I saw that my body remained in the bed, still holding on to the bottle of sleeping pills of which I had thrown two into my mouth with the intention of forcing myself to sleep as I tried to navigate my way through the heartbreak of my lover getting married to someone who was not me after all we shared. 

I leaned over my still self, staring. 

That was when I realised. 

I was dead. 

At some point in my sleep, I had died, and this was no sad event. 

Not the way I imagined Death always felt. 

There was no pain nor agony to my surprise. It had now only brought me relief and joy and filled me with happiness. It was as though I had been taken out from running an endless race, and given a seat to rest and watch the rest of those who ran. 

As I continued to revel in this joy and relief that my death brought me, my door was kicked open and there my best friend and partner stood, holding a bunch of flowers and a bag in their hand. They threw both on the floor and ran to hold me where I lay, and I saw them panic at the moment they saw my body. 

Oh, my love. You are so late, so pathetically late. 

And I waited for you. 

I could tell that for some reason, the marriage had not happened, and they had come rushing straight to me, but I was gone and dead, and they were now left alone. Forever 

I only shook my head, watching them cry and kiss the lips of my body, and hearing the sound of the distant echo of their voice pleading with me to return and come back. I found that I did not want to—I was too happy in this new place, in too much relief. 

Forget me, please. I thought. 

I am in a better place. I am happy now. 

Till we meet again.