Thoughts About Dying

My recent thoughts have been fixed to an inordinate degree on death. Not Death, the cute, down-to-earth goth girl from the comic books, I mean my death, the big sleep, the end, the cessation of my vital functions and the profoundest nothingness that follows. I've been thinking this multiple times a day, in the middle of otherwise pleasant phone conversations, while I'm reading a good book in my cell, when my sleep breaks at odd hours of the night: Byron Case, you are going to die.

The specter of death looms over my days' bland landscape like the black monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. (One key substitution, courtesy of my sardonic mind: the soundtrack isn't Strauss but that song from Sesame Street, "One of These Things Is Not Like the Other.") Death is big and weird and doesn't fit. I don't like it.

I ask myself, What if up until right now was all that I got? Let it be placed in the record that I don't believe in a hereafter. We shuffle along, taking our roughly twenty-five million breaths, eating things, doing stuff we enjoy, doing stuff we don't enjoy, having stuff done to us, and meeting a few people along the way who, if we're very fortunate, value our company enough to shuffle side by side awhile. Then we lie down or collapse somewhere, and the show goes on without us. The shuffling along is what we get.

And so I think about my footwork. I know that I'm a terrible dancer. Much has been made of the time a girl cried just because I performed a little soft-shoe in front of her. Dancing, however, is something else, laying the flattering unction to one's soul. I'm talking about shuffling and how well we do it.

Between there and here, I've generally kept my head up and paid attention to my surroundings. I've also tripped and fallen... a lot. One could actually say that my life's been a succession of sometimes elaborate pratfalls followed by recoveries of questionable elegance. My continued imprisonment, while being a travesty of justice that's hurt worse than any other tumble I've taken, is also the best example of recovery I can point to. I could have let myself be mired in woe-is-me bullshit and cried myself to sleep every night of the last eighteen years, mourning the loss of all that I love — but no. I keep shuffling. My eyes don't drop below the horizon. Sometimes I even look at the sky.

I've lived a rich life despite my poverty. Even trapped like this, under lock and key, I managed to find deep fulfillment. I rose above my situation. Here's a revealing tidbit: I had a dream, last week sometime, that I had a fatal heart attack while typing the final pages of my novel. Somehow it was scarier to leave the work undone than to simply kick the bucket. Purpose matters. Mine comes from writing and from the meaningful connections I forge with people beyond the boundaries of prison. These pursuits offer moments of beauty. They're what give color to the void.

Regarding shuffling, I admit that I tripped some people over the years. Several times it was deliberate. Long before I learned how to be happy (and oh, it's an acquired skill, believe me), I got a sad satisfaction out of watching someone I disliked stumble. Once upon a time I slathered someone's Land Rover with five gallons of lard after he rear-ended my friend's new car and didn't apologize. I don't regret stuff like this, but I also wouldn't think of doing its like again. I prefer to maintain a certain high-mindedness. It's about personal dignity and sense of scale.

Regrets constitute a whole other kettle of fish. I think the person who lives without regret is either a sociopath or engaged in some seriously unhealthy compartmentalization. You need regret for growth, to learn what not to do in the future. I cherish my regrets; they're rare jewels in the crown of a life well lived.

I regret throwing that rock at the neighbor kid just because he pushed me down. I regret not kicking Happy in the balls when I had the chance. I regret the shitty coping mechanisms Young Byron got stuck relying on. I regret not telling Brooke, Dave, and Corbin to shove off. I regret not taking Justin and Stasia's problems seriously. I regret breaking Molly's heart. I regret ever feeling sorry for Kelly. I regret giving Tim (and a host of others, really) the benefit of the doubt. I regret throwing only the third or fourth punch. I regret every time I took the short way home. I regret how little time I spent drawing. I regret doing less than I could have to show my love. I won't go on, even though my list does.

Certain myths hold that a man (it's always a man — one way you can tell it's a myth) at the gate, mouth, or shore of an afterlife waits to judge the souls seeking entry. If I fell dead at this very moment, and found myself face to face with this celestial bouncer, I'd justify my existence to him by pointing out that the balance of good and bad tips at a rather acute angle to the side of the former, that my shuffling has been, if not consistently then at least mostly of an agreeable variety, and he'd grant me passage, no sweat.

Of course, that's easy to say. It actually sounds flippant, like I'm ready for that big, creepy black block to tip over and crush me whenever. That's not the case at all. I've got an indisputable, stubborn attachment to living. I want as much life (while remaining cognizant and in control of my bodily functions) as I can have. There's so much left to do — so much more to write, so much more to make of myself, so much more to give the world, so much more love to show those in my life who matter most.

I'm not afraid to die, I'm just not ready for it yet. I'd tell this to the black thing looming over my shoulder in the mirror when I'm brushing my teeth, except it wouldn't listen.