The Annotated Afterlife

20. The Morning After

Title
Like the phrase "the morning after the night before", to suggest facing the consequences of your previous actions. Karma, baby! Also the song "The Morning After", sung by Maureen McGovern as the closing theme to the 1972 disaster film The Poseidon Adventure. Some of the lyrics seem rather apt:

There's got to be a morning after
If we can hold on through the night
We have a chance to find the sunshine
Let's keep on looking for the light

There's got to be a morning after
We're moving closer to the shore
I know we'll be there by tomorrow
And we'll escape the darkness
We won't be searching anymore

Note that this is another reference to drowning and the dangers of water.

Quote
From the 1970 song "Fire and Rain" by folk singer James Taylor. The chorus is:

I've seen fire and I've seen rain
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I'd see you again

I chose the song to fit in with rain coming after seemingly endless sunny days, and the final two lines speak for themselves. The song is also about a suicide. I must admit to rewriting the chapter "Mirror Mirror" so that Julian would see both 'fire and rain'!

Rain
After every day at the Waystation being mild and sunny, Julian is woken by a courtesy call from Bobby on the morning of his Assessment and finds that it is raining. He rings Bobby back wondering if something has gone wrong, but is reassured that it's simply a lovely rainy day, and the rain will make the parks and gardens green.

I got this idea from an anecdote about Elton John. While staying at a luxury Park Lane hotel suite in 1988, he rang his record company to complain that it was very windy outside, and demanded that they do something to fix it. As they say, cocaine is a hell of a drug. Of course Julian is much less of a diva (and not on drugs).

I was originally going to make the Waystation a place of eternal sunshine (and spotless minds, haha), because that's heavenly, right? But one warm summer evening I was taking the dog for a little stroll when it began raining very lightly.

On one side of our street (a few doors up from us) are suburban houses with green lawns out the front and on the other side is virgin bushland, and the rain immediately brought out the aroma of wet grass and flowers, coupled with a woodsy smell of eucalyptus and ferns. The cool rain on my face was refreshing, the stars twinkled above us, everything smelt clean and delightful, and I just couldn't think of anything lovelier.

Heaven would not be heavenly without rain! But yeah, the idea is also to give the reader a sense of unease, and of unusual events about to unfold.