A Little Life
Isn’t it weird how your time on Earth is eventually defined by only a few dates in the archives: the date you were born, the date you enter a union with another individual (if indeed you do), the date that union breaks apart (if indeed it does) and the day you die.
I already know the first two dates. I was born two weeks late in a hospital that has since been demolished. Take That was number 1 in the charts as my poor mum, who had already been through a lot throughout her pregnancy and long labour, pushed me out into the world with a scream and a second degree tear.
Then nearly thirty years later, I married my long term partner in a working office in the town hall of the city we met. On the day it was just us, the registrar and two close friends as we said our vows and signed a piece of paper to cement our relationship in the books, despite having been together over ten years. We met in a dingy basement bar just ten weeks into our first years. I was instantly drawn to his encyclopaedic knowledge of the post punk scene. He was drawn to my bum. Our friendship evolved into a relationship, which eventually grew into a marriage.
I know there'll be at least one more date next to my name in the archives. But I don't know when it will be. I hope it will be at least twenty years in the future. But it could be next week. I've got no way of knowing.
How will I die? Will my brain and body succumb to dementia like my grandparents, slowly shrinking away until I can't couldn’t remember my children’s names, and eventually forget to breathe? Or would it be fast and quick like my friend's dad, who collapsed one day whilst out running. One minute his feet were pounding on the pavement, the next his heart ceased pounding in his chest. I don't run, so that's one less way to die. Or will I be on the one plane with a mechanical fault and plunge 35,000 feet into the Atlantic Ocean?
My ideal death, I've decided, is aged about 85; enough time to have lived, but not so long to be too much of a burden. Old enough that my grandchildren will remember me. It would be in a hospice with my family dropping in to talk and reminisce to and about me as I die. I would be in a bay by a window, and listen to the leaves rustling in the breeze, and birds chirping in the trees. I had a cancer, a slow growing tumour that had initially responded to the chemotherapy, but had since metastasised to my lungs, my brain, my bones. I would have worked hard to keep active during the treatment, keeping up my regular coffee dates with friends, until they’d eventually started coming to me as I weakened. Eventually, I would be so weak that I would be moved to the hospice as per my final wishes. And there, I would drift in and out of consciousness, until one day I simply stop breathing and return to nature.
