The second to last of the Mohicans

I am the last of my mother's lineage, I did not ask for this but here it is anyway. I suppose if you live long enough, everyone else around you is bound to die. And they did. All of them. Except my former stepfather, only the good die young.

Life has a morbid sense of humor, if you feel like the chaos of the universe needs a manifest explanation. Me, I just think things happen when they happen because otherwise they wouldn't. If it has happened, then that's it - it can't unhappen.

We go to sleep, wake up and then do something for the period of time in between. Rinse and repeat... Life's a Bitch, Shit Happens, Then you Die.

We're all going to die...eventually. Unless you know something I don't and have actual proof to back that up.

I don't fear my own death, it will be either option A: a complete shutdown of all sensory input and processing for all eternity *OR* option B: something else. Mind you, eternity is a pretty long time and supposedly nothing lasts forever.

If it is option B, then all bets are off on exactly what that something is. You will however not have any problems finding a myriad of subcultures eager to fill that gap; religions, spirituality, alien conspiracy theories, the matrix, alternate universes or parallel dimensions - just to name a few. What they all seem to have in common is that they focus mostly on explaining why their version of the ultimate truth is the correct one, which has always made me suspicious of any such salesmen.

What we can confirm is that death is not the end, even if you die the world goes on. Your body will also probably still be there after your demise, or your ashes. Even if we burn the earth to the core, the universe will still go on. Just because you or your planet comes to an end, doesn't mean the world does. Perspective.

To quote Newton's First Law of Thermodynamics:

"The First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy can be converted from one form to another with the interaction of heat, work and internal energy, but it cannot be created nor destroyed, under any circumstances."

So there you have it, there is life after death - but not as we know it.

What we need is a religion that focuses on life BEFORE death, everything else is just hearsay (or heresy).

The Last Journey

“Good morning, John’s Funeral Arrangement Service, how can I help you?”

Awkward silence, it is hard to put words to what I’m asking for as I really don’t know what it is. I didn't get the memo.

What am I asking for?

“….my Mother just passed away and I need to make some arrangements for her funeral”

“Well, you’ve come to the right place, we arrange funerals, and everything associated with them. My condolences. When do you need this done?”

“I…don’t know, how soon is it possible to get this done?”

John, or whoever is on the other end of the line, hesitates and I hear him browsing through something, probably a ledger or some other piece of documentation.

“It’ll be a while, we’ve had a LOT of people dying over the past few weeks and we’re swamped with bookings. Business has been crazy, we have a bit of a backlog to get through”

His enthusiasm might be contagious under other circumstances, but my thoughts are on the task at hand.

“I see…. My brother is only in the country for a few more days and was planning on flying back home as soon as possible, can we do this before then?”

“Hmm, it’s a bit tight but we might be able to squeeze you in on Friday morning at 10:30, does that work for you?”

Is this what life and death amounts to in the end? A single question of when it fits someone else’s schedule to attend your last passage?

I'd asked her about death and her last wishes during the last days in the hospital, after it was clear that this was the end of the line but before the last stages of the cancer overwhelmed her.

She had wanted to be buried in the town where she was born, she was adamant didn’t want to be cremated and she wanted a private ceremony.

“I think so, what happens next?”

A slight pause on the other end of the line, “We come by the hospital morgue today, pick up her body, take it to our office and prepare it for embalming. Did you want to have an open casket ceremony?”

I…don’t know. Cancer doesn’t flatter anyone, dying from it even less so. Will I recognize her in the casket? Would she have wanted this?

“Yes, but after the ceremony we’ll need to somehow get the coffin to the north of Iceland where she wanted to be buried. How can we do that?

John lays out three possible options.

“We can do that in our Hearse, for a modest sum. You could also rent a van yourself and take it there. Or you could have it delivered by mail”

Mail? As in postal services? How many stamps will that take, I wonder fleetingly before catching myself.

In the end, I choose the path that I think she would have chosen - we rent a van and take a road trip north.

My son accompanies us, for him it is an adventure that he will remember.

Games of Death

Swinging on ropes from one station to another through the waterlogged abandoned factory, howls of bubbling joy echoing back and forth as boys narrowly avoid impaling themselves on rusty spikes sticking out of the concrete or falling headfirst into shallow murky pools of unknown origins.

I hang back in reserved silence, unnecessary risk isn't my natural environment any more than this factory is and coming here to play certainly wasn't my idea.
How many have died here before I do not know, but I feel certain there must be many and most of them are probably waiting for you beneath the murky waters if you fall in.

We play here for a couple of hours in reckless abandon, to my surprise we all survive unscathed.

Late one night as I was prowling by myself in the area around the town's power station, I saw three older boys playing football off in the distance.  One of them kicked the ball over the fence surrounding it and as he was scaling it to retrieve it he lost his balance, grabbed hold of one of the low-hanging powerlines and was instantly burned to a crisp as thousands of volts coursed through his body.
His friends go into a catatonic shock and the electricity cuts out all over town, I barely notice it as the midnight sun is still shining and no shadows exist tonight.

I run in panic all the way back home, even cutting through the old haunted cemetery in my blind haste to get home. The ghosts don't catch me this time, maybe they're scared too and hiding in their graves, waiting for the morning to relieve them.

Another time we are playing closer to my house on top of the old concrete water towers and find an access hatch on top of it to be unlocked, we open it of course and one of the other boys dares me to  climb down the stairs inside into the swirling, frothing mass of water a couple of meters below.

What higher purpose the climb down would serve I had no idea, you do not ask why when your honour and courage as a 12-year old is being questioned.

I'm halfway down the stairs when I hear the hatch start to close above me and the darkness closes in, I panic and almost slip off the ladder as I frantically scramble upwards towards the fading light. I manage to bump my head into the hatch before it closes completely and the shock of the impact is enough to jar it open momentarily and I throw myself through the narrow opening just before it shuts.

In my mind's eye I see an alternate past version of myself drowning in the darkness below while my friend runs away.  My older friend laughs at my silent distress, I find it less funny but laugh anyway.

The Death of a Collector

Death is not the end - it's just the beginning.  It's the beginning of a long journey that exposes the best sides and the worst sides of the people left behind.

It's a journey nobody prepares you for, made at a time where you're already mentally and physically exhausted from seeing your loved ones off on their journey into the unknown and yearning for rest and peace of mind for yourself and the others who have shared your burden.

The favored words of comfort to the mother of the fallen soldier is "He died quickly and without pain".  Death from cancer is neither of those things.

On the day she died, I learned that my brother was flying in to join us at her side.  I was so relieved to hear this, by then both I and my wife were at the end of our ropes after taking turns staying with her almost every day in 12-hour shifts for the previous 10 days, driving 100 kilometers to the village she'd lived in for the last 20 years.

The one day we weren't there at the hospital was when our older son had to undergo sudden emergency surgery to address an acute appendix that started to inflame in the middle of all of this.

When we arrived, we had a sit-down briefing with him and the nurse in charge of her care to prepare for the next few days.  The nurse urged us that someone should be by her side the whole time and I made it very clear to both of them we simply wouldn't be able to as we were running on fumes already and in addition we had a child recovering from surgery at home and another one that still needed family love and attention.

My brother didn't say much during this conversation, perhaps he was too much in shock himself to say or do anything, perhaps he had never even considered he might be called on to take part in this but when I finally asked directly if he could stay with her during that night then he agreed with a silent nod and a few words.

He would then crash at her place the next day after I relieved him in the morning.  His flight back home was scheduled to be 3 days later.

She breathed her last breath late that afternoon, my brother called me as we were putting our boys to sleep to inform me and after I talked to him I realized how relieved I felt that she had found peace at last and was free from the pain. My brother said that it felt like she had been waiting for him to arrive and to feel us both in the same room before she could let go.  In my heart I think he was right.

I insisted he should come and stay with us that night, it didn't feel right to let him be alone with his thoughts and grief.  A part of me also needed my brother to be able to share my grief for our mother with him but he was adamant he would stay for the night in her apartment and talk to me the next morning when I arrived.

The next morning he called me and wanted to have a memorial service in the hospital crypt the next evening.  It sounded like he wanted to say goodbye to her before he returned back home, so I agreed and started making the arrangements, calling the priest she had requested, calling her closest friends and relatives to tell them about the service.

I then tried calling him as I was about to arrive, but there was no response.  I tried ringing the doorbell to my mother's apartment, there was no reply.  I'd given him the only keys to her apartment that I had the previous morning so I was stuck outside the common entrance to the apartment block until I managed to sneak in when someone else was going out.

The door to her apartment was unlocked, fortunately, so I walked in.  My brother seemed to be asleep fully dressed on her lazy-boy couch and I assumed it was because he had been too tired the night before to bother with details like a bed or even the bigger 3-seater leather couch right next to the lazy-boy.

My mother was a collector, she collected everything she could find at any of the second-hand stores she frequented.  In her eyes, she collected hidden treasures and saved them from oblivion.

One man's trash is another man's treasure, but she was skilled enough with her hands to be able to create collections from the compulsion and charismatic enough to sweep people along with her to create wonderful displays of salvage that made them come alive.

She had several different doll collections, a polar bear collection, a Star Wars collection, a porcelain collection, several card collections, multiple book collections, magazine collections, CD collections, DVD collections, VHS collections,  tape collections, napkin collections, hairpin collections, a clock collection, a rock collection, a lava collections, reading glasses in the hundreds.....

In addition to the collections there were proto-collections that were still forming, much like the early days of the solar system when random debris floated around space and would eventually form into the known planets of today.

The only collection she didn't have was a collection of her collections.  She didn't have a collection of family photos either.

I had seen this build momentum for the last 25 years, but it was her pride and joy during those years and not something I would have wanted to deprive her of.  It gave her meaning but at the same time I learned you had to be very careful not to mention you needed anything or liked anything because it would trigger her to go off on a quest to find something not-quite-the-same-but-fairly-similar at one flea-market or the other.

In my mind's eye there was always this uncomfortable nagging feeling that at some point in the future I would have to deal with all of the things she was amassing but it wasn't something that I felt I had any right to confront her on.

However, every time I visited her the hoard she had gathered had grown slightly bigger and so did my sense of discomfort in direct proportion.

In the midst of all this, my brother slept - snoring loudly.

Poor guy - he's passed out - I thought.

 ...and I was right even if I didn't fully realize how right I was until after I'd awoken him up and we'd talked for almost an hour and he couldn't restrain himself anymore and went to the fridge to pop open a beer from the duty-free store and started drinking it.

At that point I finally started looking around and saw the cans upon cans of beer, a schnapps bottle and a half-empty bottle of vodka that had been tucked away behind the lazy-boy.

This would explain the non-sense he's been making during our conversation over the last hour or so, why he's been cycling between shedding half-tears with random sentences and references to a difficult childhood.

A childhood where he was bullied for being the fat kid but responded by beating up all the bullies, where he was forced to baby-sit our autistic brother while his friends where outdoors playing soccer and I was locked away in my room playing on my computer.

I feel betrayed from within for having trusted him, for not having seen this coming, for having let my guard down.  Then I start thinking about tonight's open-casket memorial service he was planning....

Mother had requested to be buried with just her closest family and friends attending.

"I don't want you to be drunk tonight at mother's memorial service" - I plead

"That's not for you to decide" - he retorts

What's wrong with him? Mother had said he had been having some issues with alcohol for a long time but I wasn't expecting him to be as morally bankrupt from it as this appears.

"You're right - I can't decide that for you. I can however cancel the memorial service and I will as this is not something I want to be a part of nor do I want anyone's last memory of her to be one of you drunk beside her defenseless body"

He doesn't really answer that, I can't tell if he's too drunk to hear or care what I'm saying or if he's having second thoughts about going on a drunken binge in our deceased mother's apartment on the night she died and then holding a memorial service while still drunk.

I hope he is but I suspect he isn't.  This isn't my first time in Kansas, Dorothy.

I cancel the service, he stays in the apartment for the next 5 days, drinking the whole time.  I know because I check in on him a couple of times every day and every time I came he was either passed out or trying to pick an argument about nothing.
A million things we could have talked about during those days are left unsaid, the funeral arrangements, settling her estate, clearing out her apartment so it can be returned to the landlord...

The final straw for me comes when we are there with our niece and my wife and he started picking on her.

"Who are you anyway? what do you think you know about how she wanted the funeral arrangements to be made"

I couldn't contain my disappointment and anger anymore, hijacking everyone else's grief for his own purpose was one thing I could bear from him but verbally abusing one of the few persons who had selflessly given her time and love to a mother not her own when he had done neither was beyond cruel.

"WE KNOW BECAUSE WE ASKED HER WHILE SHE WAS STILL CONSCIOUS AND ABLE TO HAVE AN OPINION ABOUT IT.  WHY DID YOU COME HERE ANYWAY? FROM THE AMOUNT OF BOOZE YOU STOCKED UP ON IN THE DUTY FREE STORE IT SEEMS PAINFULLY OBVIOUS YOU PLANNED TO DO THIS FROM THE START? I THINK YOU'RE ACTUALLY PISSED OFF YOU HAD TO POSTPONE IT FOR THOSE LAST FEW HOURS THAT YOU SPENT WITH HER"

I know I shouldn't be shouting, it's only making things worse. I know he is as much a slave to the alcohol inside him as a caterpillar is enslaved by a parasitic wasp larva that takes control over its mental functions.

I know all this but that doesn't mean what he's doing hurts any less.
All I can do is to leave the apartment before things turn even more sour, this is not who I want to be.

In my fury I hurriedly grab what I believed to be a bag with her duvet that we were going to give to the funeral parlor for the casket, what we later discover is that even if it was the wrong bag it contained something else we had been looking for.

In the bag I grabbed, we find the silk shawl my wife had wrapped around my mother's shoulders to keep her warm during those last few days and which we wanted her to have with her on her last journey but that had gotten lost in the confusion following her passing.

Perhaps my mother was there with us, guiding my hand to find it, I'd like to believe so.

Frailty

On a peace-keeping mission in the Balkans.

The bulky patrol vehicle swerved to the side to avoid the imminent collision as the luxury car sped by it on the narrow country road just missing it by a whisker.
It was probably doing around 200 km and compared to the slow moving armoured car it practically flew by with the driver and passengers a faceless blur during the encounter.
It disappeared into the distance over a hill followed by a trail of dust behind it.

The patrol team did a quick sitrep and confirmed nothing was bent or broken and continued down the road at a more leisurely pace.

This was a routine peacekeeping mission, hostilities between the different factions had dissipated a couple of years back and our presence here at this point was almost purely symbolic.
I wasn't with my regular unit this time, having been temporarily reassigned to cover a training accident victim until a replacement arrived.

We crested the top of the hill a few minutes later and came upon a sharp bend in the road, the luxury car had come to a halt upside down some hundred meters or so in the corn field beyond the curve.

There were no signs of brakes or anything indicating the driver had attempted to stop before going off the road but the trail of destruction leading up to it suggested it had made a few vaults before it finally stopped.

The commander jumped out of the car and motioned for me to follow him as he headed towards the wreckage. I closed in on him as he was scanning the vehicle for survivors, he looked back at me and shook his head in resignation.

- "What a mess" He paused and considered briefly, "Corporal, stay with them and make sure no civilians come close. I'm going to call in a tow truck and the coroner"

He left and I found myself staring at the underside of the overturned car. Completely clean, this car was probably fresh from the production lines and hadn't been driven more than a couple of hundred kilometres.

I was vaguely aware of the bodies inside of the wreckage, misshapen and bloodied beyond recognition. The brain however did its best to preoccupy itself with anything else, like the unusually clean undercarriage.

I was struck by the fact that just this morning the lifeless bodies had been living beings full of vitality and plans, plans that didn't include the present state.
How frail this state of life seemed as I stood there alone by the side of the wreckage.

We were eventually relieved from our vigil by the coroner and police that took care of the clean-up operations.  The rest of our patrol continued without any further incidents and ended with me being returned to my base while the rest of the unit headed for theirs.

As the months passed, the harder I tried not to think about the tragedy the harder it became to suppress it. The frailty of life came more and more into focus and things that I had enjoyed before no longer gave me any sense of satisfaction anymore.

Depression is a cancer of the soul, I had a tumor the size of my heart inside my being and it was growing. I knew it would eventually consume all of me if I didn't do something about it, my body was feeling the effects of the phantom malignancy already.

I eventually got PTSD counselling via the army and this started my journey towards healing. I have a long way to go but I believe I will get there, I feel the love of the people closest to me pulling me in that direction.

Sanctuary

- If you just wait here - he should be arriving any minute from his daily walk with his attendant.

I wait, the room is spartan but tidy and pleasant apart from the lingering odour of the institutionalized.  Probably sterilized regularly and devoid of the normal bacterial fauna we're used to from home.

Very hygienic, could belong to an OCD teenager with an obsession for tidyness.

I'm bringing my brother a Christmas present, it's the first time I've visited him in 15 years.

When he arrives, his caretaker accompanies him inside and seats himself on a chair in the corner of the room while my brother sits on the bed.  He looks up into my eyes briefly but I don't see any hint of recognition in there and he looks away.

He also wears some sort of safety cap that looks like a cross between a hockey helmet and an executioneers hood. Unsettling...

He looks sideways at something in the distance and his dried lips part in something resembling a grin without being a smile and I'm stricken by the absence of frontal incisors - his entire front row of teeth is gone. Missing. I didn't know.

Mother told me something had happened, something bad. She wouldn't say exactly what beyond vague bits and pieces and she didn't have the strength to visit him anymore so she had been hinting regularly that I should.

I ask the attendant to give us some privacy, he looks puzzled and asks if I'm sure. I tell him I am even if I am not and he leaves to get some coffee and a cigarette to go with it judging by his yellowed fingertips.

I raised my brother to a certain degree, grew up with him or rather beside him as he never grew up. His body matured and grew stronger but his mind never caught up.

After I left them mother tried to continue by herself and did so for some years until she didn't have the strength anymore to handle the outbursts of a child trapped in the body of an adult and eventually found some supportive housing for him run by an association for the mentally handicapped.

It was inevitable and always had been since the day he was diagnosed. It was the best for him and the best for her also.

- What happened?

My brother looks up, he seems to have heard my words but still no hint of recognition or understanding.

- Who did this?

Blank stare, grin.  He starts chewing on his lower lip and rubbing his forehead with the palm of his hand.

- I will find them

Nothing, the lights are on but if anyone's home they aren't answering the door nor do they care for visitors.

I swallow my tears and my rage and leave, the drive home is as unreal and foggy as the visit itself but I remember this;

You beat my brother's teeth out, then you raped him.

I will find you.

I will make you hurt.

...and years later I did, but not in the way you'd think.

Fear of the dark

There was a strange building right next to the farmhouse, it looked like a cross between a cave and an artificial hill with some pieces of driftwood randomly stuck into it at odd angles and grass growing on top of it. It must have been well over a hundred years old at least by the looks of it.

There was something dark and sinister about it in the eyes of a 7-year old, no electric lighting for one thing and it housed a bull and an old cow that I never saw leave it either.

One day they were just gone as if they never existed.

I avoided the place for the most part, I didn't like the dark and the bull was a looming presence that just filled me with dread whenever I approached it.

The farmer that lived there and was married to my mother didn't really respond to my attempts to get closer to him.  I tried calling him father at some point shortly after we moved there but he didn't answer and just looked at me silently each time until I stopped trying.

He locked me in there once in the middle of winter as punishment for something I did or didn't do, I never figured out which one.

The terrifying disconnected feeling of being lost inside complete darkness with nothing linking you to reality except the deep breathing of a beast capable of goring you to death doesn't leave much room for sanity in a child.

I was however too afraid of the bull to scream... in fear that it might get angry, break loose and trample me to death. Silent tears were all I dared to cry, that and nails digging into my palms were what kept me sane for what seemed like hours but might have been minutes.

Fear of the dark, fear of the dark, fear of the dark.

Time loses all meaning in sensory deprivation, without electricity there isn't even the hope that you can find the light switch to re-enter the physical world.

A child without hope is a child without fear and I was afraid. The only option is to face your fear or go insane. The problem is you never know if you failed or succeeded afterwards.

The library on the farm had several volumes of ghost stories from the countryside and I had read them all.

The ones coming uninvited back to me as I shivered in the pitch black darkness revolved around ghost doors that would sometimes appear on the sides of the organic buildings, these would lure you inside the walls, close behind you and entomb you in there forever.

People would disappear without a trace and then years later someone would find their bones inside one of the walls.

I wondered if that could have happened here on this farm before or if it was happening right now as a door opened in one of the walls without anyone visible outside it and dark light flowed in with nothing except the slight howling of the winter chill audible in the background.

Fear of the light, fear of the light, fear of the light.

I don't remember much more from that episode, at least not getting outside although evidence would indicate I did somehow.

A couple of years later the organic building was demolished by a bulldozer, I'd never set my foot inside there again afterwards and I hadn't told anyone about what happened either.

Until now.

I watched from a safe distance as the walls came down, waiting for something to reveal itself.  I was pretty sure I saw a collection of bones at one point when a wall came down, but the belts of the bulldozer crushed them into bits and the next time they were visible they just looked like so much gravel.

Perhaps it was an unlucky lovechild from another age, perhaps it was just a dog or a cat.

Nobody made a note of it at least and I didn't share this with anyone either.

Until now.