His Final Time

Dictated using JustPressRecord on iPad (in bed)

Let me get this down. It’s 2:34 in the morning and I would prefer to just go back to sleep after a somehow very satisfying though awful dream, but I’m waking myself up enough to dictate this.

I’m in our space capsule and will soon be reaching the moon . I’ve somehow made myself the least liked person on this crew. But I want my turn at the moon, too. And so I take what’s coming to me. Wrap myself in my blanket, as the others are wrapped in theirs, and I get into position, and I wait.

Yes, we’ve landed on the moon. Now we’re all in this little container together, with our different small amounts of remaining time—the exact amount of minutes and seconds for each of us determined by some judgment or choice that was made in advance. And now it’s just a matter of waiting. We’ll all expire soon, one after the other.

One of us winks out, but the rest of us remain alive. One by one we’ll reach our limit of oxygen. 

There’s a sort of kiosk of choices we’ve been sent here with. A small selection of books, about five different songs, a small choice of colors, and that’s all. I touch a button for one of the songs. Oh give me a home, where the Buffalo Rome. Is that the best someone could’ve chosen for us. I read to us all from a book, opening it to a random page. “Patricia looked around her in Paris, and waited for the sister of the man she secretly loved to arrive.” Really? Is this the best our species could have chosen for us as our last meal of language?

It’s going on a little longer than any of us expected. Our final moments keep having yet another round of the clock. This doesn’t wonderful, I’m sure. And yet just outside this capsule is the moon. We are on the moon. Each of us has wanted to come to the moon, and we’ve been given that opportunity. I’m lying here expiring in a capsule that is too small, with people who like me too little, but I’m on the moon. I’ve made it to the moon.

I know that’s a wonder. A wonder to have experienced while I was here. I start a song. “This is me singing. This is Tom inventing a song and Tom performing and Tom affecting other people.” Of all of us here, I’m the one still desiring to make life lively for more than myself. But they others start to sing along. As I hoped, they laugh. And that is tom having an effect on the cosmos in one of the ways he has always loved. Tom forgiving the dislike of others again, and once again attempting to make those others laugh. They had run out of love for me, they didn’t even like me now, they no longer cared if if I lived or died. But I have them laughing. I have brightened the universe a bit. I know it .and so does the universe. It’s acknowledgement enough.

How long will I continue alive? Will I ever actually finally no longer think? Will these others?

But now I’m drifting upward, outside the capsule outside from that dead and dying crew. I must be dead now! Yet I’m still thinking. It is undoubtedly still myself, thinking.

I’m floating above the surface of the moon. Will this be my eternity, floating across the moon, disembodied, but still consciouis? And I’m not full of sorrow. I’m not in pain. I’m not afflicted with lack of interest. I’m on a world with no one else and nothing left to do but observe, but I’m satisfied. But why remain here? Can I get back to earth. 

Let’s float upward until we see stars. Until the Earth itself, distant but still quite large, comes into view. Becomes something I might possibly aim for. At whatever speed I can muster. I’ll could aim myself there.Even if it takes a thousand years, this is what I want. This reduced existence of simply drifting and simply observing can be enough, somehow, to sustain me through such a long wait. 

And somehow I do reach earth. Somehow I’m on earth again.

I’m in our house on the hill. All my family is here, wondering if I’ve died yet on the moon as I was sent to do. My brother Bill is there. my four sisters, my mother and father and our dog Hansi. 

I say, “Bill, I’m here, I’m here, I’m here, I’ve died, but I’m here.”And he hears me. And then to Mom, and Dad, and Kathy, it’s Linda, and Susan and Debra, and Hansi. They feel my voice like a breeze, and they know. Tom has died, and now Tom is here. They feel joy now. They’re content. 

How long can I go on as this kind of presence? I can live on like this forever I suppose. But like it was with so many things in life, I’ve had enough of it for now. And I’m saying goodbye to each of them. And now I’m drifting away from them. I suppose that’s how it happens. You’ve get to where you’ve had enough of the dearest people and things you’ve known. Desire decreases enough, and you float on to whatever is next. Go on to whatever else there still is. 

You’re still you, you’re still thinking, you’re still aware. Somehow, that’s enough.

I drift down from this hilltop, from our house, go down to the floor of our valley. First down from the moon, now down from our hill, now down here in the valley to play out of sight from Mom and Dad and the house. Kathy’s has come down here, too, and we’re playing, she physical and definite, me invisible and almost just a theory, but still in faint communication. My ability to say, “I’m here” and have that silent statement reach into hard reality and move it—this ability grows fainter and fainter. And the Earth is no longer a vision in solid color but just a vision in black-and-white like a charcoal drawing. There’s the knowledge that Kathy and other children are all about having fun. And I use my paintbrush and paint something in charcoal. Something black and white and thin, like a Japanese Brushstroke, but it’s vivid as black-and-white can be. And I hold it where my Kathy can see it. The spirit of Kathy somehow transcending the boundary between life and death, her curiosity about anything that is. And she remarks as she did 1000 times in my life that what I just made is good. That little remark from the human race being enough for me. I can keep doing this for eternity, I tell myself. Making these barely-there drawings of what I’ve seen or can imagine. This is fine. it’s not the grandness of being on the moon, it’s not the warmth and solidity of being back at the house with my family, but it’s still me being operative in the cosmos. I can go on forever just drawing.

But I’ll take a little break from it now. and now I have floated off above that valley floor for a minute, and know I’ll never go back. I’ve received my last complement. But I’m done with that plane of eternity before I even know I’ve made the choice.

And earth now is less and less visible at all. It’s more and more just black dots here and there like a very thin visual static. I’ve diminished even further. I can no longer observe. How had that become OK for me? But it had.

At each step down I’ve been satisfied enough. I’m expiring, expiring, and only minding each step down for a second or two. I just keep being satisfied by what’s left.

I wonder when even consciousness will go. How does such a power let go of itself? Will I finally decide, “Enough of this, too?”

It’s been a gradual decrease in desire. Step-by-step, less and less, at each step, satisfied enough. Less and less color, then less and less vision, and at each lessing, no grief, but easy acceptance of whatever remains? Will I finally not mind as the last begins, and never finishes?

I’ve never been able to believe my consciousness will someday stop. For the first time, I think it will. 

Will it become less loud? Less coherent? Will it be a brief insanity? Or will it just switch off, like a light—just at some point stop, with no Tom left to notice? Will it be like that time I counted down at the hospital? Let’s try and see: 100, 99, 98.

I woke up from this dream feeling I’d gotten closer to death than ever. Faced the end of awareness more honestly thanever. Scooted closer to the edge. Felt a dream like this simply could not go unrecorded.