THERE IS MUCH TO DO
(excerpt)
I can imagine myself in a hospital bed, in the dark corner of a room, opposite a doorway open onto an austerely lit hall. People walk past the doorway in both directions: hospital staff mostly, but plain-clothes visitors too. I can imagine myself in that bed, imagining that I'm one of those visitors walking that hall, past a doorway open onto a dimly lit room, getting a glance at a dried-out man in a bed in the far corner. I can imagine myself imagining this because I've been in hospitals visiting someone, and walked past that room with the dried-out man in the far corner, and gotten that glimpse of him, and had that momentary flash of "there's death in that room, closing in on that man." It's a smell that goes with the sight of him, and a thick silence that would push against my face if I were to stop in the doorway and look at him. So that is a plausible ending for me, that one day I'll be that man in that bed looking out on people cutting across that hallway. It could very well be that way. But whether it is that way or not, it won't be the end. Not exactly. I will have left things behind: things I've said to people who are still going about their lives, time I've spent with people still going about their lives, gifts I've given them or reactions I've given them, nice ones / shitty ones (those are the ones that will matter -- the passive, half-assed, indifferent reactions likely won't), and if I'm lucky, words I've written them. Maybe books, maybe letters or cards.
"People who are alive are not really people, because they haven't died. But people who have been alive and then died, they're the whole kind of people that we want to be our teachers. I can't really explain it, being alive and all."
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