in my dream, the one where you were drooling all over the 16-year-old girl behind the counter groaning that reverb into her then moved on to pawing at two skinny sick hustler boy addicts all itchy and scabby needled-tracked mouths all over one another your hands grabbing asses who backed and then flattened into the wall transforming into posters and looked at me with black eyes and I turned to Eric Bogosian waiting at the table for you and he said, “That’s who he is,” after you went to the head without even missing them and that is the same place two men pushed me onto my ass when I was 15 after I dragged a woman from her car across the passenger seat through flames once it was safe enough for them to take the credit for what I had done.
“When I see anyone laughing, I just think, don’t you know? How can you laugh? How can people walk around laughing and carrying on like that?”
“Oh, come on.”
“Seriously. Think about it. It’s sick.”
“Please. You should know better than anyone. None of it will matter. In the end. Right?”
“But just think of the dolphins. That should keep anyone from laughing.”
“Stop.”
“They say all the fish in the ocean could be gone in forty years. Just jellyfish! That’s all. That’s all that will be left. And that’s bad. That’s really bad. But when I think of the starving dolphins … washing up on shore? Can you imagine? My god. And the whales. That just gets to me. The dolphins and the whales. That really gets me.”
“You should know better than anyone. None of it matters. In the end. Tell me again.”
“What?”
“Tell me. About the one thing you know for sure.”
“What. Oh, that? From the accident? Jesus. You already heard that.”
“Not in detail, I don’t think. Not everything, Tell me again.”
Groan.
“Tell me.”
“Jesus.” The leaning-in anticipation weakened her. “Okay. So. Imagine a black room.”
“Yeah?”
“The blackest black.”
“Yeah.”
“Black ceiling. Black walls. No windows.”
Nodding.
“Black floor. Imagine the darkest black you’ve ever seen.”
“Got it.”
“Now, imagine, in the black room, you close your eyes. Blacker still.”
Eyes close.
“Then you cover your closed eyes. Nothing blacker. Right?”
“Right.”
“It was darker than that.”
Open.
“I don’t know how else to say it. It was darker than the darkest black I can even imagine.”
“But not scary.”
“Not scary in the least.”
“That’s nice.”
“It was nice.”
She relaxed back into her seat some.
“And then you heard the voice?”
“Not right away, but I didn’t hear a voice, because I didn’t have ears. I knew I didn’t have a body. But that was later. The voice.”
“First, you struggled.”
“Yes. For a long time. I felt like I was suffocating. And I was fighting. I mean, I thought I was fighting, like, I was trying to swim, or get loose from whatever was suffocating me, but then it dawned on me, I wasn’t under water, there was nothing, like, I wasn’t tangled in a bunch of comforters or something. I wasn’t even moving. I couldn’t move. I had no arms. To fight. I had no arms to fight with. But I was still struggling to breathe anyway, but just, in my mind. And, eventually … Damn.” She knotted her brow deeply. “That was so awful. I hate remembering that part.”
“Skip ahead then.”
“Well. Yeah. Anyway, at some point it just dawned on me that I wasn’t suffocating, because it had been too long and I should have passed out by then. Right?”
Nod.
“And then it just stopped. The struggle. Sudden. Over. Like, you know, when, after labor? Once you give birth. And you see the baby?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know if any of yours were hard labor. Like, hard.”
“My first.”
“Yeah. My first too; twenty-two hours. Hard. All the way from the first contraction. Like, the first contraction was six minutes long. And full-on.”
Disbelief.
“Seriously. I’m not shitting you. I called Penny, to ask, you know? Because it seemed really hard. And it’s not supposed to start like that. And she stayed on the phone with me, asking questions, and her mom was in the background, and when, and one came and she timed it. And I came back on the phone after, and she said, like, dead serious, ‘That was six minutes,’.”
Stunned belief.
“It was like, I’d have a contraction, then another one in twenty minutes. Then ten. Then ten. Then six. Then six. Then two. Two. Two. Then … forty minutes. And then it’d start that all over again.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. Twenty-two hours. My doctor called it ‘prolonged latent phase.’ In the weeks after, when I’d be at the grocery store or whatever, and women would come up and be like, ‘Oh, look at the baby,’ and ask me when he was born, I’d say, ‘August eleventh … Andtwelfth,’.”
“Ha. Man, I can’t believe they didn’t cut you open.”
“My doctor was an OB, you know, homeopath. Holistic whatnot and all that. And he and I agreed. Ahead. Only life or death.”
“Ahh. Yeah.”
“Anyway, so, you know how, after, you just forget all the pain? Like it never existed? Like, you can remember, like, you can remember the moment when, like, for me, sixteen hours in, that if someone had come to me then, I’d lost my mind by then, if somebody had come to me then and said, ‘We can make the pain end, but we have to cut off your head,’ how you’d be like, ‘Yeah, okay.’ And they’d say, ‘But, if we do that, you’ll die. So … are you sure?’ and you’d be like, ‘Yes! Do it!’.”
Snicker.
“So, you know, you remember thinking something like that, or being that bad off, but after, you know, how the actual memory of it, as soon as you see the baby, the actual memory, it just all goes away?”
“Yeah. I remember that.”
“It was like that. Poof. The fear, and the suffering, was gone. Once I gave up the struggle. So, try to remember that, when you die. Just give up the struggle.”
“Got it.”
They softly chuckle.
“Then, anyway, I started to feel like I was floating, suddenly, like in the movie, Contact. When that chair the engineers put in there came loose. You see that one?”
“No.”
“Well, the dumbass engineers on Earth added this chair with seatbelts and such into the plan for the time travel machine, or, not that, but whatever it was, the space travel thing, but anyway, there was all of this violent shaking and I mean, violent, in the scene in the movie, I mean, not when I died, the shaking, when the ship took off or whatever, because that wasn’t in the plans, you know? And then when it broke loose, the chair, when the chair broke loose, then everything was all peaceful. It was just floating around, peaceful, and Jodie Foster was just floating, peaceful. All the noise and shaking and shuddering stopped. It was like that.”
“Peaceful.”
“Yeah. Immediate. And then I realized, or, it came into my awareness, this bitter cold. Like, way below zero. But it was the weirdest thing. I wasn’t uncomfortable. Like, I knew, like, I knew I should be cold, I knew I should be, you know, uncomfortable, but I kinda realized, I was just my essence. With no body. But who I am. All the way through. Same snarky bitch.”
Sharp guffaw.
“Seriously. It’s not like I turned into some kind of angel.”
“Aww. I think you’re an angel.”
Eye roll reply.
“Yeah, right. So, anyway, I just accepted it, because the cold didn’t bother me. I mean, I had no skin, so, once I let go of the thought of how I should feel about cold, it didn’t bother me. I just had to let go of how I thought I should feel about it.”
“Wow. That’s … yeah. That makes sense. I think.”
“Right. Like, there’s no fear associated with it, like of freezing to death. Or annoyance. You have no body. But anyway, I couldn’t really feel anything, like how we can feel things. I mean, I couldn’t feel my skin, but not like I was numb. I couldn’t feel anything, physically. Nothing. No physical sensations. So, it’s actually impossible for me to describe it, because I knew it was cold, but I couldn’t feel it, like how we can feel things, so I don’t know how to … to … but then I kind of sensed; this is not earthly. You know? Then I was thinking, I don’t know, like, curious, like, what’s this?”
“But you weren’t afraid?”
“Not once I gave up struggle. Once I gave up struggle, it felt great. And once I realized I had no body, it was even better. You would think that you would miss your body. But I didn’t. I was totally there, my whole being, who I am, and I didn’t need my body. It was freeing. So weird. You wouldn’t think it would be like that. But that’s how I felt. Free.”
“Free’s good. I like free.”
They pause, thinking.
“Then there was this flood of feeling. Like relief times ten. Or something. It was better than anything I can really describe.”
“Love. You said love before.”
“Well, that’s what I’ve said. It’s the closest word to it, but way more than the word we use here.”
“The word we use here. Funny. You were, what do you think? Floating in the universe?”
“No. There weren’t any stars or anything. It’s really impossible to describe.” She squirmed a little. “It wasn’t here anywhere. I can’t explain it.”
“Yes, you can. Go on. Tell me.”
“I don’t know. Another dimension? Wow. That’s big. Ha.”
They looked at each other with demonstrably raised eyebrows. Smiled.
“But anyway, then I was floating and I was remembering people. I could picture their faces. And, the one that shocked me was this woman.”
“From the grocery line!”
“Yeah. The woman in the grocery line. That had happened years earlier. I had forgotten about her. Just a stranger in line. But there she was.”
“She was kind to you. At the store.”
“Yeah. I was scrounging up change, and counting it out, because I was so broke, and the cashier got indignant, rolled her eyes. And I looked back at her, the woman in line, embarrassed.”
“And she smiled at you.”
“Yeah. But the way she smiled. It was so genuine.”
“And then you heard the voice.”
“Yeah. But.”
“You didn’t hear it. You had no ears.”
“Right. It was, like, in my head.”
“But you didn’t have a head.”
“Right. But. I don’t know how else, anyway, it was like a thought, but not my thought. Not from inside my head. It was like, an implanted thought. It was someone else. I knew it was someone else. It wasn’t my thought, but it came to me like a thought, but more powerful. And clear. Like someone talking to me. I don’t know. I’ve thought about this, to try to describe it better, but the feeling was like …”
“Was it God?”
“No. Definitely not God. I don’t know, it was like, it seemed like, a guide of some sort.” She shifted in her seat. “That sounds corny.”
“No, it doesn’t. I don’t think it sounds corny.”
“That’s the closest I can get.”
“What did it say, or convey, or whatever. Implant.”
“It said, nothing bad you did ever mattered.”
“That’s good news.”
“And I have never been so utterly convinced that something was true. It took a second to digest it. But … it just felt … so … true. And once I fully accepted that, I mean, fully, fully knew that it was true, and accepted that, and leaned back into that, and relaxed, and things settled, it said, nothing good you did ever mattered.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. It was like, wow.”
“Cool. Like, no one’s keeping score.”
“Yeah, but even better. It’s like, it’s not like, you know, well, you did this bad stuff over here, but over here you did this good stuff, so that offsets it. More. Deeper. More like, it’s good to do good stuff, sure, that’s nice and all, but it just doesn’t matter. That’s just here,” she indicated with her hands, palms down, mildly bouncing, “in this world. And, really, think about it, like, the inauthenticity of, like, if you do good things, and then you think, see, I do good things, so I’m a good person, here’s the evidence, that’s like, if you’re doing good just to rack up some points, even if it’s, like, subconscious, or like, socialized, you know? That’s not authentic, really. That doesn’t hold water.”
“Yeah. True. True.”
“But the feeling, I can’t explain it, but it was even more than that. Like, it’s like, there aren’t good things. And there aren’t bad things. Not like how we think of it. But even better. I don’t know how to describe it.”
“Hmmm.”
“Oh! I know. Total acceptance. I mean total, complete, no bullshit acceptance. Like, pure. No judgement. And then, and that’s when I started moving, as soon as I got that. It was a G-force. But I couldn’t feel it in my body, ‘cause, I had no body. Like, there was no wind, sound. Nothing. But I felt it anyway. Somehow.”
“Where were you going?”
“No idea.” She laughed out loud. “No earthly idea.”
“Ha!”
“It was just getting better and better and I loved it. Total acceptance. A deep realization. All my frustrations and resentments and worries had been a waste of energy. It almost struck me as funny. Like, I kinda felt like laughing. And then, suddenly, I was moving so fast, faster than anything I’ve ever experienced. Into something. A sense. A feeling. This enveloping sense of support. That I was utterly loved and supported by everything. Every thing. Everything. All around me. In me. Everywhere. Love.”
“Nice. Then?”
“Then I remembered Corey.”
“Your German Shepard.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve seen pictures. Chasing seagulls on the beach? He was beautiful.”
“Yeah. He was a good dog.”
“You hitchhiked with him, right? To California? Way back when?”
“Yeah. When I was nineteen.”
“Jeez. Crazy. So. Then?”
“Then, everything stopped. Full stop.”
“Aww.”
“Yeah.”
“Then?”
“Then the voice said, well, not said.”
“I know. Implanted.”
“Yeah. It implanted; do you want to go back?”
“And you went back?”
“No. I mean, I took a second to think about it. I was torn. I mean, damn, it felt so good. I didn’t want to go back. But then I saw his face, Corey’s, and I was like, shit, I should go back. ‘Cause I was thinking, who would take care of him? And then I thought, yeah. And the second, and I mean the very exact second, millisecond, that I had the thought … I was back.”
“Damn.”
“I sat up on the gurney and took this huge breath and then just passed out again.”
“The doctor told you that?”
“No. I mean, yeah. He confirmed it. When I talked to him about it the next day, he confirmed it. He said I was dead for a minute and seventeen seconds. Well, he didn’t say, ‘dead,’ of course. He said that my heart stopped and I stopped breathing. And they didn’t do anything to bring me back, because, well, they didn’t think I would be able to survive the brain injury. But yeah, he confirmed that I sat up and took in this big breath.”
Pause.
“I’m glad you remembered that dog.”
She looked down, sheepish.
“That dog went missing six months after that. Someone stole him, I guess.”
“Well,” sweetly, “I’m glad he didn’t go missing six months before that.”
Another pause.
“But, so, you don’t have to worry about the dolphins, right?”
The Life You Could Have: a memoir 