A Business of Misery

Tip #7 | Use Past Experiences to Better Your Guidance

This story is part of a new compilation I like to call 'Stories that go well with lofi hip-hop,' so if you're interested, here is the stream I listened to while writing this.

Other grim reapers love this story. I think it's a pretty unique occurrence. As far as any of us have ever known, the human whose soul needs guidance and the reaper who guides that soul are paired at random. Nothing or no one consciously picks which grim reaper guides which soul, so for the most part every experience is unique, and while we all remember every human we ever help pass to Purgatory, their lives don't matter in the grand scheme of things.

I've had a different experience, though. I once guided a woman into the afterlife; she was at the middle of the average human lifespan and fairly beautiful by human standards. She had everything that makes each human so special in the eyes of every other and she had served her purpose on Earth, or so I told her since that's what she needed to hear. I remember everything about her just like I remember every other human I've ever guided for the eternity I've existed. That's how I knew, in this particular case, that I'd found myself in a truly extraordinary position.

The human whose soul I was to guide to Purgatory was a man in his mid-twenties on the human calendar. He, too, was nothing short of attractive to other humans and he bore a striking resemblance to another human whom I'd guided almost two decades prior. Now, among all the humans to ever exist, you will find there to be many, many, many people who share various features whether they be nose shapes, eyes, jawlines, hair colors and growth patterns, physiques, the way they annunciate their speech, what have you.

I would say the unluckiest grim reaper to ever exist would be one who only guides humans that look completely unique to them every time. It would be boring to only ever see different faces; you'd never get to know what the human race truly looks like and you'd be left in the dark about how to bring peace to a restless soul. The human design, while having room for seemingly infinite possibilities, is still limited. Even with so many lookalikes out there, the affinity shared between parent and kin is unmistakable.

So, there I was face-to-face with someone I never thought I'd see again, or at least a face I never thought I'd see again. The son of the woman I guided years and years ago. Now, it was time to guide him, too. It really hadn't been that long in human time since his mother had died, and now he was passing at a younger age than she did. I'm not interested in sharing the details of his death; I want to talk about what came right after. Just me and that man. I wanted to do something extra special for that human given the opportunity.

Instead of lightly nudging his soul and having it make its ow sense of death before sending it off to the great beyond, I decided bring out what remained of the man's consciousness from within the soul. I don't think he quite realized that he had passed at first. When his eyes opened and looked up at me, nothing indicated a single thought in his mind. A moment later, though, he recognized me—or he recognized the form I took, anyway.

"Mom?" he said calmly before lifting his head from my lap. We sat on a couch against one wall of the vague representation I had constructed of the house the human grew up in. I could tell he didn't care much about the setting; his eyes were glued to me. "Mom..." he said again in disbelief.

I smiled at him and nodded gently. "You're so big now," I said

"I—uh..." He paused for a moment and studied me. I was a perfect recreation from his memory and the photos had had seen of me at the funeral. "How are you here? I thought you—."