Incomplete Tale of Death
By: Tim McPhee
Dramatic, isn’t it? Death of an author. I suppose it’s a bit presumptuous to call myself that as I have never once completed a novel. Two novels in the works at the moment, neither anywhere near completion. But does a man define himself only by what he does? Or how much he may have achieved in his chosen field? If that is the case, I suppose I should also mention my musicianship. Yes, I am a drummer in a blues/rock band as well. Two artistic careers in what can’t even be advanced enough to be referred to as their infant stages. Fetus level, that’s where I am. Or perhaps I should say was.
With eternity stretching out before me and my life behind me I find myself with ample time to reflect on the existence we call life. It is funny how this whole death thing works. Spirits without bodies doomed to forever reflect on their decisions in life. It’s funny how our memories seem to be the same after death. We can vividly recall and even relive any moment from our lives we remember, but we remember our most recent experiences better than any other. For that reason, I find it much easier to reflect on and relive the final year of my life far easier than, say, my third year. As we progress earlier and earlier back from the point of death, it is harder and harder to fully remember and appreciate these earlier experiences.
More’s the pity, really. It is the earlier experiences that further help define who we become. Choices we made so long ago affect more and more what we are when we die. Ideas like this had been brought to my attention in life, but I never truly paid them much heed. I assumed that I would always have a chance to change myself for the better.
Another pity. I lacked any true sense as to what “better” was. I recall early in my life that I had some form of morality, yet at the point of death my moral compass possessed no needle. No longer did I know what better or worse was. Who was to say what was good and what was evil? These were all choices we made for ourselves, but what the hell are we? Who are we to know that which we are? I suppose I’m becoming a little existential again. Lack of a body tends to do that.
It’s funny, really. I have no body, yet I have a mind. But I had always sort of thought that a brain and a mind were synonymous. But to have a brain, one needs a body; a corporeal form. Since I do not, I do not have a brain. And without a brain, how the hell can I have a mind? But I do have a mind because I’m using it to think. Aren’t I?
This train of thought could go around in circles again for ages. How long, exactly, I can’t hardly say as time no longer seems to have any meaning. My whole concept of time really only seems to be measured somewhere in the time it takes the earth to rotate the sun between twenty-one and twenty-two times. I say this because I no longer feel the effects of time on me. Whether one needs a body to feel it, I cannot say, so I know not whether I am in a void where time has no meaning or if time is truly passing and I simply no longer feel it.
Or perhaps this theory of mine that time itself is related to motion in some way. Well, I suppose it’s not really my theory. And I also think I am getting myself very side-tracked.
Whatever the case, I tend to ramble on a million sideroads in this state as I simply have nothing else to do. I am dead afterall. Or so the person who claims to be Death tells me.
Yes, Death. I often wonder if he’s simply a product of my subconscious view of the pseudo-mythological medieval icon. You know, just my own way of letting me know I’m dead. If this is truly the case, then I guess I’m just alone and inventing people to keep me company. And since I think I’m only recently dead, it is entirely possible that as I get more and more used to the death experience of being without a body, I may invent more and more fantasies to keep me company until I am a veritable god in my own afterlife.
Which also brings up the question of whether or not that’s all we really were in our lives. Just the figment of some dead being’s imagination to keep himself entertained through eternity. And then when we die, we become what our creator was and now create our own universes to entertain ourselves. Sort of like a form of procreation, I suppose. And perhaps with this plethora of universes there’s some grand being watching over it all to see how everyone’s universe has developed in an effort to keep itself entertained through eternity.
But I guess that just brings us back to the God theory again. My own humanity showing itself once more as my thoughts always seem to possess a need to return to the idea of a being greater than ourselves.
Perhaps it has to do with our need to better ourselves; to evolve and improve. Rambling thoughts again, I really should look into getting this under control.
But, I feel I must keep in an existential vein for a brief moment (or perhaps eon, it’s really impossible for me to tell) longer. Some of you reading this may be wondering how one who is dead and without form can write this. I no longer have a connection to the world as I knew it, save for my own memories. Well, it is quite simple.
I just am.
How the hell should I know how I’m doing this? I’m dead for crying out loud, do you think my biggest concern is exactly how this piece is being written? I have bigger things on my mind than your own little understanding. Cosmic things!
Things like how I so dearly miss the joys of eating a cookie. Oreos especially. Like how my father would buy the double stuffed Oreos and I would rip them apart and sandwich two together to make a quadruple stuffed Oreo, by far the grandest of all Oreos.
Doesn’t sound important to you? Fine, wait until you’re dead and see how suddenly the idiotic priorities you had in life seem pitiful when compared to what you took for granted.
Though I suppose I’m not really one to talk. I had no real priorities in life at the time of my death. Sound pleasant? No goals, no worries, just carefree? Or does it sound horrible? No ambition, nothing to look forward to, little to do. Well, I remember it being neither horrible nor pleasant. It just was. Sort of like how things are now. Maybe that’s why I was taken at such a young age.
Maybe our deaths are meant to come when we fully realize just how meaningless and pointless our lives really are. Maybe those who die before realizing this are given another chance and become reincarnated. Or maybe their attitudes are too horrible for second chances at life and they damn themselves by remaining behind as ghosts to haunt places. And maybe people like me who just don’t give enough of a shit to care wind up here in this endless void of nothing.
If that’s the case, then I suppose the good people make it to Heaven and the evil people wind up in Hell. If this is how it really works, then I feel the christian church has really lied to me. They promised me hellfire and brimstone and, I must say, I’m a little disappointed.
Then again, I have no real way on knowing whether or not any of this is true since all I know is the void and my life at this point. And I don’t even know if this is a point for that matter, I mean it’s not like I can really measure time here. For all I know that one fleeting one-dimensional segment of time to me could have stretched from one end of eternity to the other and back again. I guess that would make me feel powerful if I had anyone to compare it with.
But, I suppose I should discuss my life and death now, insignificant as they are. I’ll never forget the day I died. February 14, 2002. That’s right, Valentine’s day. Mississauga, Ontario, Canada was the city of my death. The city where the majority of my life was spent, actually. I died in my room. My little second floor on the western corner of my family’s house.
Looking around, I can vividly remember its appearance. Its black wallpaper with the white ceiling. The blue and greyish carpet with the stains from feline hairballs and whatever the previous owners has spilled on it. My bunkbed with the black sheets. The brown wood of the bed, the desk, the dresser, even the microwave stand I used as a bedside table.
Dirty as that room was, it was my place. Technically it belonged to my parents, but I felt as if it were my own personal territory in which to bring out my own personality and tastes. The floor was littered with stuff. Mostly just random sheets of paper or books or empty bottles of what once contained alcohol. The drawers, shelves, and closet were much the same way. Dumping grounds of the records of my past. The drawer of my microwave stand contained things important to me that caused me no pain. The desk drawers were my pain drawers. Letters and gifts from past girlfriends and crushes. Impossible to open without feeling sadness.
Never regret, though. In life, I refused to allow myself to regret anything I had done. Nowhere had I tread that I would not have tread once more had I been given the chance to do it over. Nothing I had done that I would take back. I may have been sorry for things I had had to do, but when they cannot be taken back, there’s no point wasting time in regret or worry.
That’s not to say that I did not worry at all, though. On the contrary, most of my life was one big worry. Always about the future, did I worry. When I was young I was so skittish and afraid of new situations that I spent much of my time in tears over the stupidest of things. Later, the early pressures of highschool made me into a nervous wreck about getting good grades to get into a good university to get a good job to have a good life.
Seeing how things actually turned out, I’m rather glad I perfected my slacking skills later in highschool. To think of all the time I would have wasted in university. I’m much more glad that I wasted them doing fuck all at home.
I think I was talking about my room.
My bed by the window. It had kept me warm and comfortable on so many nights. And the fun that I used to have on the lower bunk with a lady friend. Well, lady isn’t quite the right word. Girls is what they were. Yes, young girls. Not that young, though. High school girls, mostly, which was all right since I was a high school boy. Or a college girl, but I was a college boy, so that worked too. Nothing taboo in my mind. Nothing that taboo in society’s mind either, so long as race wasn’t considered. I did not die a virgin, which may have been something that would have depressed me. Of course, I did die without fathering any children and that has left me a bit disappointed, but there’s nothing to regret. I never met a woman I’d truly want as a mother for my children, so there’s no point in me getting worked up over it now.
Overall, I’d say it was for the better, really.
And my beloved desk with the obsolete computer on it. About the point of death, once a computer became a week old it was obsolete, so technically all of the family computers fit that description. But this computer was one of our older models. But, it still got the job done and it was the only one hooked up to a printer. Printing ability for the young and aspiring author. I’d sit there for hours at the computer, thinking things to write and then writing them. It felt very much like what I’m doing now.
I remember it all vividly, surrounded by things that I thought helped define my personality and character. My drumsticks sitting atop a couple of small boxes of Starwars cards and a novel I had borrowed from Jon that I had never read. The stack of cassette tapes that I no longer listened to thanks to CD players and mp3s.
Oasis, Snow, an empty case, that mix tape Liz had made for me, Supersexy Swingin’ Sounds of White Zombie, Republica. Ah yes, the White Zombie tape and Liz. The first time I had Liz over to my house we had scattered all the tapes across my carpet yet didn’t really listen to them. My first taste of passion with a girl. I was proud of myself despite the fact that it took me seventeen fucking years. Pathetic, isn’t it? Well, I’d like to think so.
Beside the tapes were a stack of books and leaflets. Research for my writing. Rule books for Vampire: The Masquerade to help me with my vampire story and rule books for Dungeons and Dragons to help me with my fantasy novel series. Yes, series. I had been planning on my own little epic trilogy. Another disappointment that I could not see it fully through.
The walls. Clad in black wallpaper, as I have mentioned, they were decorated with a myriad of hangings and things. The portrait of Gandalf and Frodo with many other characters from Lord of the Rings. Below that, my Ontario Secondary School Diploma. Beside that, the Barcelona Queen, one of my first selections for a tiny collection of weaponry. The small pictures on all the walls of The Undertaker, two male lions, a female white lion, two Siberian tigers, and a black panther. Did I like cats? Very much so. We did have seven, after all.
The katana and my hunting knife sharing a wall with my Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Attendance and my college certificate for the completion of Preparatory Music (on which I made the dean’s list). The portrait of Lauralanthalas (Laurana as she is more commonly known) above the figures of Wolverine and Sabertooth from the X-Men movie. The novelty “Wanted” poster of me for committing regicide and the Black Sabbath and Rob Zombie posters.
Me in a nutshell? Hardly. But it was my room and I liked it. Oh, there’s so much more I could go into about it, but I’m beginning to bore even myself.
I think I’d much prefer to discuss my own death now.