Visions

• Anna Mclaren, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2020

Cancer, you’re quite sick of it at this stage, but it’s what took out your old man. Now look at yourself, lying in hospital with nothing but an empty room and a tumour growing around your femur. Frankly, your old man never cared for sympathy; it’s what did him in at the end of his life. The memories he left behind are still with you, but you can’t help but remember that the last time you saw him… he was motionless on a bed, so far from the boisterous nature that he once possessed.

Visions. Everything was simply a blurred vision of the world. The world was bright, almost too bright. You could hear machines whirring beside you, trying with all their might to keep your body functioning like it did 40 years ago. You thought you’d felt this doom before, in the time you fell off of your bicycle as a child or the time you thought you had eaten an under-cooked sausage. Like a great snake coiling harshly around your windpipe, slowly make every action a chore. But this is different. This is finally being able to let go. After 75 years, finally your job is done.

This job seems elusive, like catching a chicken who always seems to evade your grasps. You never even knew you even had a ‘job’ to complete in your life. But somehow, as your breaths fade, your heart drops and everything seems heavier and lighter all at once, you are at peace knowing that you are ready. Your body fights once more to keep going, but finally, your fight is over.

And so, death visited you one last time. They held out their warm hand, familiar like those of your family, and you learn that you are not afraid. Death has greeted you as a beacon of completion; your purpose is fulfilled in this world. As you walk with death, they tell you of your accomplishments, why you could finally leave. ‘You left because you healed’. Whether they were referring to the healing of yourself or others is unknown, but the phrase rings true like the singing of a gospel choir.

Your loved ones will cry because they lost a good man, but they will learn that your passing could equally be as valuable as your life. You can greet death with slings and arrows and be forever in pain, or you may greet them with contentment. Death reigns as the truest form of peace, to greet death with resistance only juxtaposes its true meaning. If you are truly ready, you will go.

As you reach a small bench in your local park, death speaks, their voice reminiscent of a thousand choirs in melancholy synchronisation. ‘You may choose now, you can say your final goodbyes, or you can go’.
‘Where will I go?’
‘You will find out when you get there.’
You look at death, with a wordless exchange. They give a nod, and suddenly, you’re home.