"To live is the rarest thing in the world.
Most people just exist."
Oscar Wilde
I try to shatter the glass of my helmet in one last melodramatic act. I try to embrace death in an eloquent way. I pound on the glass incessantly until I grow tired. The glass remains intact.
It won't be the way I imagined.
It will be the hard way.
I give up waiting for death and decide to meet it head-on. I don't think there's anything unethical or immoral about it. Anyone who wants to judge me is welcome to do so.
I open my helmet and feel all the air leave me, not just the air from inside the suit, but the air from inside me too. I can't breathe, and I'm suffocating in the vacuum much slower than I imagined.
As I die, I realize that talk of your whole life passing before your eyes is true. I think of love, forgiveness, growth, respect, heroism, passion, animals, ghosts, manipulation, infinity, evil, music, waiting, offspring, hope, extraterrestrials, women, trivialities, loneliness, connection, boredom, religion, disappointment, accidents, friendship, missing, indecision, addictions, romance, work, depression, anguish, childhood, rejection, comfort, desire, excitement, hallucinations, fatigue, consequences, guilt, aging, suicide, nothing, sex, death, illumination, and liberation.
I am free.
I am complete.
I am dead.
Everything goes dark.
The curtain falls.
Finally, the end.
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"In memory of the Unknown Astronaut
whose final reflections were heard
by the Judica-Cordiglia brothers in 1961.
Rest in peace. You will not be forgotten."
YOU ARE READING
Drifting in the Space of Ramblings
Science FictionAn astronaut lost in space. Dying. Drifting. What will be the last things to pass through his mind before death?
