Truth or Dare

Waking Up and Leaving

                                                                                                     Lydia

It's funny, watching the people in your life after you die. Seeing them react to your body being found. Wes tried to beat Dominic up, Allie and Annie had to pull him back. Hayley screamed and sank to her knees, Annie ran after me when they brought my body to the ambulance. Jack didn’t speak. Neither did the Casey, Janie, Will or Kyle. The camp held a candle lit vigil that night like they do when one of our own, past or present, dies. I've been to three, two were military deaths, one was cancer. I had known the girl with cancer. She had been a friend, not close but a friend none the less. I wondered if the heads were feeling the same as I had during that, or if they hurt worse.

People often wonder what happens to you when you die. I know I did when I was alive. Well here's what I experienced.

After that last kick to the head, it was like all the lights in the world went out. I couldn’t feel anything, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe. It was like absolute nothingness and I knew I was finally done. Accept I couldn’t have known anything, because I was dead and my brain was dead which meant no thoughts. So why I remember what I experienced, I'm not sure.

Then came the flashbacks. They weren’t kidding about your life flashing before you. But it wasn’t like most people say. It wasn’t my entire life, just parts. The day I met Nicole, the day my mother died, the day I met Wes, my sixteenth birthday party, the day Charlie got into college, my first kiss with Wes, the night on the Hill when I promised to marry him. It was like watching a short film composed of all the important moments in my life. I shouldn’t have been able to remember them, because I was dead and dead people weren’t supposed to be able to remember.

But I did remember, and then I woke up. I opened my eyes and saw that I was standing next to my unmoving body. The first thing I did was scream my head off. Of course, the paramedics putting my body on the gurney and covering it with a white sheet didn’t hear me. I didn’t think they would. Live people aren't suppose to hear dead people, or we'd hear ghosts all the time.

After I finished screaming, I watched. I realized how much I could see now. I was able to notice the small things, little things that I never seemed to notice in life. Like how loud the birds were when they were singing and the small rays of light between the leaves. When I got down to the beach and saw my friends, when I stood next to them as a spirit, I noticed the little details about them too. Like the smell of Annie's lotion, the small scar between Jack's lip and his nose, the few hairs that would never stay in Allie's ponytail and the way Hayley played with her feet when she was upset and trying to put on a brave face. The Wes said my name and how he grabbed the hem of his shirt trying to keep himself from being provoked by Dominic, even though it didn’t work.

I wanted to go to my own funeral, but I knew I didn’t have that much time. I did get to see the candles and hear what the director had to say about me. How many people shed tears, I didn’t realized so many people cared about me. I saw Natalie crying, though I didn’t understand why. She always wanted me to burn in hell, I'd of thought she'd be happy or at least indifferent. Maybe she felt responsible, at least partly, for what happened to me.

I did get to follow the heads to our place that night. They nailed my bandana the tree behind the hollow log and carved my name into the bark above it. Hayley led the closing ceremony with Wes, which would be their last closing ceremony. They weren’t coming back next week. Allie and the trainee's were the new heads now.

"Wes," I whispered and reached out for him as he sat in front of the tree with my bandana and cried on his own. But I couldn’t bring myself to put my hand on his shoulder. I didn’t know the rules between the dead and the living, if we were allowed to touch or if he'd even feel my hand. So I just stood and cried while I watched him cry for me. "I love you. I'm so sorry."

"Lydia." I turned to see my mother standing next to me. I look at her for a moment before looking back at Wes. "Honey, it's time to go."

"Will I forget them?" I asked and wiped my eyes.

"No. You can watch them grow and live. Often times it feels like you live through them." My mother put a hand on my shoulder. "Like I did with your father and you and Charlie."

"Will they forget me?"

"No, not completely. You never forgot me. But there will come a time they won't think of you as much. They may forget your voice or the smell of your shampoo. But you will never truly leave them. You've made too much of an impression."

"Will I see them again?"

"Perhaps, one day. But you're not meant to be with them now. You're not meant to be here."

"What about Wes?"

"We're spirits, Lydia. We can't tell the future, just watch it unfold for the living. But I can tell you this, we don't belong here. There is nothing good about the existence of dead people remaining in a world we no longer are a part of. In fact, it's nothing but misery."

"Where do we go now?" I asked, finally looking away from Wes to my mother.

"We don't call it heaven because there are those who don't believe in god and heaven. We just call it the resting place." She explained. "It's time to go, Lydia." She held out her hand, but I wasn’t not ready to take it. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Wes and my life on earth. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to my friends and family, I didn’t even get to say goodbye.

"And I'm able to watch them?" I felt like I was about to cry again.

"I never stopped watching over you or your brother." My mom said, still holding her hand out. "Lydia, it's time for us to go."

"But I'm not ready."

"Nobody ever is, baby. I wasn’t ready. But it doesn’t matter when it's your time. There's nothing we can do about it now."

"I didn’t get to say goodbye to them." I looked back at Wes, who had gotten up and started back down the path to Knight's Ridge. Panic rose in my chest and I took a few steps towards him. I couldn’t lose him now. I couldn’t lose my friends. I had a future, a life to live. "I want to be able to say goodbye!"

"I didn’t get to say goodbye to you or Charlie." Her voice was sad, she understood what I was feeling. She was thirty five when she died, not as young as me but still young enough to want to fight it. But no matter how young you are, you can't fight death.

"But I had a future! I… I was going to be in the Olympics. And I was going to marry Wes. We were going to have a life together. We loved each other. I was going to be maid of honor in Charlie and Nicole's wedding. I wanted to have kids and be a mother and do something with my life. I had a future."

"Baby, it's time to leave that behind."

"No! I can't. we're not talking about some stupid dream, we're talking about my life. I'm not ready to give that up!"

"Do you think I was? Do you think that anyone who's ever died young was ready to give that up?" My mother asked. "We don't get a choice, baby. We live until we die, and then when we die are reunited with those we lost and we watch over those we left behind. Nobody gets a choice with this. And neither do you. Now it's time for us to go."

I thought about staying. Haunting the old cabin, giving camp a real ghost story. But I knew that it wouldn’t stop my aching. That staying wouldn’t reunite me with Wes or the other heads or my family back home. In fact, it would permanently separate me from them. This way, this resting place my mother wanted me to go to, that was my only chance of ever seeing them again. "Alright." I turned back to her and took her hand. I wasn’t ready, but I understood that I didn’t have a choice.