Break me

VI

I could have died last week. I was riding to school with my brother and he was trying to run through on a yellow light and a car on the opposite side of the street was trying to make a left turn in front of us.

When you're about to die, I heard your life flashes before your eyes, but mine didn't. I didn't see anything. I gasped, blinked, and it was all over. It was too fast for my life in its entirety to flash. One moment I was bound to die in the next, then the next moment, we braked and I was guaranteed to live maybe another fifty years. Life can be too fast.

I got to thinking what would have happened if we hadn't braked just in time. I know I would have become a lot more like you than I ever wanted to. Then I wondered, what did you see when you died? Did you see me? I doubt it. I doubt you were really spending your last moments thinking about me of all people.

But mom, I'm so sick of the way people talk and act and treat me. And sometimes, it doesn't make sense to me how people like even my own sister can go around acting and convincing me that they aren't ever going to die and acting like they aren't at least halfway thinking about how they are going to be dead someday and die soon.

I know you aren't supposed to think about dying, but I've been thinking about it a lot because I think that if you think about yourself dying and not existing anymore and eventually losing your mark on the world, you start thinking more about how you act in the present. I think the more you think about dying, the more you think about how you want to be remembered.

I keep thinking that when I die, I don't want to be thought of like Marilyn. I don't want to be self absorbed. You probably never thought of that before you died, but you should have. You should have thought about how there are some losses we never get over.

Grayson