Everything Dies

Everything dies. She knows this.

So many people live as if they will never die. They focus on the fleeting, the controversial, the meaningless noise everywhere. Escaping into what doesn’t matter is easier than facing hard truths.

She is going to die sooner than many of her peers. Or she may want to because life’s quality may evaporate and leave her a dried husk of her former self. The only person who truly loves her deserves more than a life of constant burden.

When a doctor gives her the news, she stops thinking about what she might do at sixty or seventy. Instead, she transforms into a desperate frenetic being. Cramming her minutes hours days weeks months with every possible experience. Begging people to notice her work so she’ll believe it matters before everything dies. Trying and trying and trying to get what she needs.

So so so so so so so much trying.

If she is honest, she is glad her aunt dies while she is overseas. She stays where she is because she wants to remember the last time she saw her aunt alive. Pretty. Dressed for dinner like she was headed to church. Laughing with her friends. Living in the moment.

She is selfish.

Home is a chasm of loneliness. A realm of superficial chatter without open-ended questions. Friendship by algorithm. She burrows into her selfishness.

Still, her aunt gave her one final, selfless gift: A month of unscheduled time.

See, she set aside a full month, thirty days of penance for seven weeks overseas. She expected to be with her aunt every day, hours and hours of complaints and jumble puzzles and bowel movements and CNN on stun.

And she comes home to a vacuum, endless days of quiet in the wake of loss. While her husband works, she sits in her house. Stares at the walls. Mutes her phone. And contemplates everything the past half-decade has taken from her.

For the first time in five years, she chooses not to flee.

She scrolls through her accomplishments. Reads her creations. Recalls the gaggle of faces she’s met, the stories of how she makes a difference. She isn’t less than, not good enough, just because she’s broken beyond repair.

She listens to what bubbles up. One by one, she bursts those glistening orbs. Never good enough. Not done right. A disappointment. Not the daughter anyone wanted. Expects too much. Too ambitious and grasping. Too needy.

Soapy, wet globs collapse on themselves in slow motion. She wipes the residue from the floor, throws the rag in the trash.

She will focus on what matters. Her husband who loves her completely. People who feed her creative soul. Cheerleaders who tell her anything is possible. Words that will change the world. Experiences that help her keep growing into the person she’s meant to be.

She’s strong enough to carry whatever she must for as long as necessary. She never needed anything from anyone. Her soul is everything.

It took complete silence to see the rest as useless noise. She is determined not to waste her aunt’s parting gift. Because everything dies.

This post is a continuation of The Aftermath of Death, She Was Venus in Fur, Grief Out of Balance, For the Love of a Gun, Death by Toilet and Biscuits, Gardenias and a Funeral. All are fiction.