How to: Gently Go into that Good Night

There is no way in which I could die that would not make you cry. 

I died before birth that one time and you almost killed yourself. You had never even met me but somehow that did not bother you one bit. I was completely formed in your mind; no half-baked bun that couldn’t even survive in the incubator. I was whole. And that’s why you almost killed yourself that time. What would you not give to see me smile, at least once. To know me, even a little.

I died when I was not even one. You couldn’t even be one of those annoying women who say “My baby is 32 months old.” The doctor was right. Wouldn’t you have been even more devastated had I been forced to live with an unformed heart, only to die when you had made all plans for pre-school? This was better, right? Yet, you cried. You wished you had never met me. Maybe then it would have hurt less. 

I died when I was twenty-three and it was utterly and completely my own fault. How on earth did you find a way to blame yourself? You even convinced our mother to not buy me that motorcycle I wanted. You were responsible. You were cautious. How could you ever predict that the bicycle would skid on the muddy road? It’s not like you controlled the rain. But I know you wished you could have. The doctor was right again. At least I did not have to spend the rest of my life as a vegetable. At least I had died on the spot. Almost painless. You threw something at him; something heavy. 

I died at sixty-five. I had lived my life. I had raised our children. I had provided for them, cared for them. I had done my bit. You still felt it wasn’t enough. Why did the disease have to fester for so long? Why did the children have to see me go? Why couldn’t it be quick? What did you, or I, do to deserve this terrifying wait? 

I died at hundred and six. No human had ever lived that long. At least no one in our family. This time I didn’t mind waiting for a bit before moving on. I was sure this time you’d smile. 

I later wished I had not waited. This time you could not cry in front of the others because there was no reason to cry. Hundred and six year olds are meant to die. That is literally the one thing they are meant to do. Yet you wanted me to sit right up and get back to work; get back to whatever I had been doing for the last hundred and six years. 

But this time you had to hide in a room. Because no one else got it. They were talking about the full life I had lived and you could not bear to listen. “It was quick, painless, it was everything you ever wanted,” our son reminded you. But you wanted more time. 

You wanted more. 

There was no way in which I could go that would not make you cry.