Slice Of Life: A Daily Story

Day Five

Tuesday, June 26th
based on a conversation that occurred during small group.

Nothing

Meribeth stood beside the bed. The beeping had ceased. The fervor disappeared. She hugged herself and stared down at the bed. The tubes remained yet in her arms. Life ends so suddenly. Walking closer to the bed, Meribeth stared down into the face of her mother. It wasn’t as she expected … death. It was so brutal, almost cruel. There was the look of terror on her face just before a bubbling, gurgling sound. Her eyes open wide, moving erratically, almost in frenzy, almost like she was fleeing, or trying to. Death didn’t come peacefully to her mother. Death came forcefully and her mom tried desperately to escape its clutches. Why? Why Mom?

Meribeth lightly reached out her hand, brushing her mother’s hand ever so lightly. It wasn’t cold like she expected. It wasn’t anything, actually it just was, just is, well, there. That was it really. All that was left of her mother was just, well, there. There lying in that bed as nothing; just a body, a bag of bones and flesh and nothing more. But oh mother, where have you gone? Not in this bag of flesh. This isn’t you any longer. Meribeth pondered as she stroked her mother’s lifeless hand. Mom seemed so extremely terrified of death that surely she hadn’t seen the bright light and walked a path where family members greeted her warmly and the love of God surrounded her. So where did you go, mom?

What happens to the soul after it leaves the body? Does it “hang around” here, completing unfinished work in the afterlife? Does it go into a form of “purgatory”? Are there levels of heaven that each soul has to work up through to reach God? Or is there nothingness, sleep eternal that seems but a moment in time. Is heaven for real?  Are you there Mother? Can you look down upon me, cheer me on, weep with me? But would you be so frightened of heaven? Could you be in hell? Was that the final look that I saw in your eyes, wide and frantically searching for a way to get out?

Meribeth shivered. The thought of an eternal hell sent chills down her spine. There would be no knowing. Her mother lay dead in the bed and could never come back and tell her. That is the way of death. It is to remain ever a mystery. Philosophy wasn’t something she enjoyed, theology even less. No Meribeth lived in the reality of the physical world, that which can be touched and seen. There were things that needed attending to now, arrangements that needed to be made. “We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever; the goal is to create something that will.” Good ole Palahniuk. While she didn’t believe in any form of immortality she did like to ponder that which would outlive all of humanity. The cockroach, it will definitely be the cockroach.

Meribeth reached up and closed the still wide open eyes, closing the terror that she still saw lurking behind the glazed over globes. A nurse walked into the room. The funeral home had arrived for the body. She nodded and stepped away from the bed, taking one last long look at the body lying in the bed. After all, that is all that it is. There is nothing; nothing but a bag of bones and flesh. Her mother was not there, not any longer.