PART 47

Not to start off in too harsh a manner this morning, but I wonder what last thoughts go through a human brain as it meets its end. I wonder if it can be something extremely mundane like, “Did I leave the iron on?” Or “What was that guy’s name I meet at work? I can never remember names these days.” I wish we all had the exact same last thought. Whether an old man in a hospital bed or a child on the wrong side of the playground. I wish when our hearts stopped beating and our brains slowed down to one last spark; we all thought the exact same thing before “the great unknown” finally became “known.”

And I wish it was this:

“Aloha… you magnificent beast. We’ve all fearfully called you Death, but now I call you “the inevitable conclusion.” Now I call you “the annoyingly impatient last stop.” Your talons are not as strong as you think they are. But I suppose neither are mine. Look at this body. This shedding shell of condensed atoms has been falling and scattering across the Earth and sky since the day I was born. And yet there is still more left of me NOW then when I began. Perhaps I learned that from my origins of the planets/stars/condensed cosmic power/energy/heat from long (but not that long) ago. They have always been known to spread their essence into new beings and I guess I just picked that up from them.

And I suppose if I can consistently free myself of skin cells (for a brief human lifetime) and end up a more powerful and interesting and complex and magnificent being than when I began; I suppose I can continue to do so even when you win and I lose… you silly monster of the end. I submit that, within this fragile body, I did very well on my own. So, what wondrous accomplishments will I achieve once I am on the side of nature wrapped in the holy arms of the never-ending universe?!? Trees will be grown from my skull. Birds will feast on the steams of my eyelashes. My bones will form a bridge to birthing stars.

I’ve always thought that people will come and people will go. You, Oh Death, have tried to fool us into that thought. But we come into existence and then we never go away. We never leave. We are always here. We are eternal in the most physical and beautifully strange sense. I will always be alive and help make up the atomic existence of the universe. And you have not won and you will not win… you silly self appointed Dark Lord. Not until you have stamped out the dim lights shining in all the corners of the cosmos. Not until you have painted infinite galaxies black with your own hand. Not until you lick clean the plate of all and everything. Good luck. Good luck. I will be waiting.“