On the day I died, I purchased a sleek casket made of ivory and dug a hole six feet deep in my favorite spot. Don't ask me why I knew it was my final day, because I can't give you an honest answer. I just woke so quietly, propped my weary head up with a dozen throw pillows, glimpsed the spinning ceiling fan above my head, and knew.
It kind of just washed over me, if that makes any sense. It was like reaching the finish of a great movie or novel, and being both content with what happened and sad that it was all over. Like that certain kind of wave that tags behind another, creeping up on you when you expected the ocean to be clear at last. You're at first troubled by the crash, troubled by the foaming water getting salt in your eyes, or the nautical chill of the unannounced hit. But at the same time, you're deeply pleased it happened, that you were caught off guard in a moment you thought you knew what was coming next. We, as humans, all need a moment like that--a moment in which we believe the waves have stopped, but another reels in and strikes a blow to your chest. Straight to the heart.
Realizing that it was my final day a breathing citizen was just like that. All those days that went by, all those nights when I felt there was no moving on--it was like the waves were my days and I'd thought they were finished. So many times did I think they were finished. So as I was lying there, gazing up at my fan that moved clockwise so quickly it was just a blur of white, I knew in my heart this was the second wave I'd been waiting for, and I knew in my heart there would be no more waves after it. My life had spun as fast as the ceiling fan above me, and it was about to slow down to its permanent stop. The blissful idea of eternal rest made my all too tired eyes water with relief. Oh, how it would feel to be free, at last, from all these hardships.
Years ago, I was the kind of girl who thought of dying as the scariest thing imaginable. I mean, I was a Catholic, and I believed in a God, and a Heaven, and the angels, and all of that spiritual stuff. I went to a Catholic school to learn, and I prayed before dinnertime, and I attended Mass every Sunday morning, eight o'clock sharp. Fine faithful people weren't supposed to be scared of death. They knew the eternal paradise ahead of them, and greeted their dying day as if they'd been training for it their whole lives. But me, well, I think all that religious education went to my head. I wasn't looking forward to the final day where God would judge the living and the dead. I wasn't even sure myself if that day was gonna come, or if I'd be alive for it. I think a part of me just assumed that if all the Christianity was indeed true, I'd be going to hell for the few sins I'd been able to commit, and if it wasn't, I'd still be going to hell for committing idolatry because of the God I was trying to believe in. And I didn't want to burn, or freeze, or push a rock up a hill for the rest of eternity. All I wanted was to fall asleep and dream a sweet dream where the world was a better place.
I calmed my fears with a select amount of remedies. The first was my hamster. He was slightly overweight, with silky white fur that was splotched with haphazard dots of brown. Almost tragically, he happened to be the only living thing that I could actually call a comrade. His cage was set up adjacent to my bed, and even when I was sleeping I could always hear him scurrying about on his little wheel. He was nearly glued to the thing; all he ever did was run and run and run, squeaking and squeaking along, never moving from his spot, never getting anywhere. His pipe dream of actually running somewhere reminded me of two specific things: 1) Myself, in the "never getting anywhere" sense, and 2) Sisyphus, the actual man of the rock-pushing Greek myth. So I named the hamster after the latter mentioned reminder, and thus, I had a companion.
My second reliever was books. I loved the idea of them: entire societies packed into a span of pages, brimming with dimensional people, foreign places, and great adventures. I guess a lot of people use novels to fill voids in their lives, because I don't think books would sell if they didn't. And, evidently, there are so many books in so many languages out there in the world. Escapists are the most unfortunate breed.
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An Imperial Affliction
قصص الهواةMy short story version of Van Houten's "An Imperial Affliction," featured in John Green's bestselling novel "The Fault In Our Stars." The story of a girl named Anna, a Dutch Tulip Man, and a hamster named Sisyphus.
