It seemed such a simple thing. I spoke to him, he to me, and then he died. There was no great pealing of bells, nor the stirring bellow of a legion of trumpets. Just a gentle sigh, a mist into which he slowly tipped. Slowly at first like a newly felled oak, then gathering speed and momentum to crash into a little metal closet at the foot of his bed.

He was neither a Chinese Emperor to be buried with a terracotta army, nor an Egyptian Pharaoh laid to rest with masks of gold and scarabs of glittering stone. He was frugally sped into the great unknown with two magazines, a half bottle of orange juice, and a rather mediocre novel.

He never did finish that novel. I know this because I watched him mark the page and carefully put it down only seconds before the massive heart attack that killed him.

Coming to think of it, he never finished his orange juice either. I wonder what fate shall befall it. Will it be taken home by a member of the hospital staff? “Here Johnny, drink the juice of a dead man”. Will it be taken home by a grieving widow to be anonymously consumed at his wake, or will it be tossed into the garbage? These branches of chance are all possible but the root is certain: The bottle will be forgotten!

It is almost certain that I am the only entity giving thought to that bottle, and when I choose to cease it will perish. It will be as though it never really existed, a shadow riding on a breeze.

image by Agata Urbaniak