Hear My Heart Burst, Again (This is the End)

This is the end. I know it in my heart, though I can hardly feel it beat within my chest. It murmurs softly against my ribcage, against soft folds of weathered skin. Where once vivacious strength and spirit had resided is now worn to destitution. Opening my eyes is hard; I remember a time when it was not - when the hues of the world were not so precious to me. I took it for granted, but of course that's not too out of the ordinary, and now even the colors I see in my mind's eye are tinged with yellowish decay. This is the end.

"This is the end," affirmed the man in a white coat. I knew his name once, in a past life, but now it was difficult to even remember the color of his hair, or the tenor of his gait. Indeed, I cannot deny it with any fiber of my being. This is the end.

This is the end. The man spoke to a familiar crowd of people. I felt their presence through my blackened world. A lady almost as old as I and in whom resides the better half of me sat with a blue beaded bag, crying softly. I wanted to reach out and touch her in some way, let her know that the pain was past now. I felt nothing but the blissful numbness of annihilation. I had seen past the curtain into the somber train which would soon take me beyond. I wanted her to know, and I have forgotten her name, forgive me, that I loved her. Next to her I felt four younger people, also weeping silently. Well, one not so silently. In my weakened mind, a bright image appeared: blond hair, stern chin, fiery blue eyes... my eldest daughter, whose sobs pierced what was left of my heart. My son, always strong, always present, was not past crying, and each shuddering inhale was a hurt too deep for me to bear. If only I could fix it; if only, as when they were children, I could kneel down, wash their wound and bandage it, giving it a little kiss to assuage them. This is the end.

This is the end. I remember when my grandkids heard that word. There are several, but here I know of only one old enough to comprehend the transcendence of my soul. He was like me in appearance, and he too wept alongside his mother in the same loud fashion. How such things become hereditary is a mystery I shall never get to ponder. I wish now that I had more regrets. It is oddly human, is it not, to be able to look back on an otherwise fruitful life and seethe at one missed opportunity. In feeling so utterly content, I seem to be dehumanizing myself. This is the end.

This is the end. My eldest daughter - Diane! comes up to my bedside and grasps my hand in hers. My fingers cannot feel, but the remnants of my heart ache at the sound of her heavy tears dropping onto my thin sheets. I hear her shaky voice: "Thank you for everything, daddy. I hope... I hope-" she breaks off, and I know her brother and sister are comforting her, as her sobs become muffled in some sort of coat. My son... Jack! speaks next. "I love you, dad. You gave us everything we needed... You w-were there for me when-" He too cannot continue, and I'm surprised because his eloquence has always been a strength. He's a writer, after all. My youngest, Kate, my baby girl, is surprisingly the most clear. "I love you, dad. I'm gonna miss you every day, every minute, from now on. I'll never... never ever take another moment with mom for granted. I hope you're not in any more pain now." My grandson can but form four words, and they are those upon which I have reflected the most, recently. "This is the end."

This is the end. My wife uses her walker to shuffle next to me, and I feel her warmth tingle a lost feeling in my hand when she holds it. Her name... I refuse to move on until I remember her name... Abby! Abby's tears are unlike Diane's; they do not fall in thudding splashes, but little soft drips from the end of her long nose. She has but a few words for me. "I love you with all my heart, Allen. With everything. I'll never stop loving you." I feel her lips brush against my clammy cheek. "I'll see you soon, but I have to look after the kids now." This is the end.

This is the end. What I would not have given to open my eyes right there. I bent all the strength in my feeble body towards just that simple task. I recalled a strange statistic: the average human blinks about twenty thousand times a day. How horrible that now, when the need is so dire, I cannot manage just one blink. Of course, I wanted to more than blink. I wanted to throw my arms around her, hug her, kiss her, tell her it would be okay. The doctors were wrong. It was not the end. I wanted everyone to have a moment of shock. My kids would chortle and wave it off as, "another one of dad's pranks." Lucas, my grandson, would feel such intense relief that his torturous encounter with the deepest trenches of his emotions was yet delayed that he would cry with joy, and Abby would likely faint. I'd carry her in my arms as I had on that beautiful summer day, so long ago. This is the end.

This is the end. But before it, memories came into my mind's eye. I remembered playing tag with Tommy Pembroke in elementary school. He kicked me in the knee for trying to tag him when he was in the safe zone. I kicked him back because he'd made up the safe zone the moment I got close to him. Two teachers had to separate the ensuing fight. I remembered my first crush. Jasmine O'Neal. She had black hair she would flip emphatically over her shoulder. I never plucked up the courage to ask her out, and while some may consider that a regret, it was not long after that I met Abby, and... This is the end.

This is the end. Our wedding day was fabulous. Summer, I believe I mentioned earlier, and it was on a brilliant day indeed. June 8th. We had gone to a farm nearby. Bumblebees buzzed in the lazy breeze, flitting between little tufts of flowers. Woods with deep green, luxurious leaves surrounded the meadow, and at the center with but one dirt road leading to civilization, was a white church. If you'd seen it then, it would have been quite peaceful, but soon a tumult of noise broke the day's mild air as Abby and I walked down the steps, hand in hand. My younger body fit well in the suit, and her wedding dress was spectacular. White, of course, and long flowing. The perfect dress for the summer. Rice was thrown, I picked her up in my stout arms and carried her to the quaint road, where a car awaited us. This is the end.

This is the end. Another memory, this one of Diane. I never called her a mistake, just a surprise. I remember poring over financial documents, trying to figure out where the money for a baby was going to come. Abby put her hand on my shoulder, her belly swelling through a thin shirt, and said, "I'll help. I can get a job." Where I'm from, that was unheard of, but a job she did get, and she made enough money to stave off the debt-collectors until I got a better position. This is the end.

This is the end. These memories did not come in sequence. They seemed to pour out of me at once, and I saw them all with utter clarity. Those meadows of my marriage, the silty creeks of my childhood in a small southern town, and the hot, humid dampness of that August night when Abby fortified my spirit more than any liquor ever had. Traipsing through these recollections, I did not come across much sorrow, or anger. Another dehumanizing thing, I suppose, but when my brain possessed me of a painful memory, I felt again the presence of my soul residing in the five people at my bedside, and the memory was tinged with rose. This is the end.

This is the end. I can feel the breathing become more difficult. They've shoved some sort of tube into me. Oh hell, there's so much machinery and tubes in me and beside me that I no longer know what is me and what is that mechanical oasis from which I draw the strength to live. Oh, if pure will could do it. If it could, I'd be bursting at the seams with energy, with grandeur. Yet it cannot. Will is only feeling, and while it breaks through reason and sets the heart on paths more difficult than humanly possible, it is not enough to stave off the inevitably of death. This is the end.

This is the end. And who should know what next begins. There was a time I believed in God with all my heart. I drank from Providence to sustain myself, and therein I found comfort in those old words typed on thin paper at Church. Memories again flew before me: the first took me to my younger days, when I felt lost and a Father came to my house and showed me the spirit of Christ embodied in those words. The stories, the conviction... It was that faith which drew my wife and I together. If I had been dying back then, she would have ensured a priest joined us at my deathbed, and I would have agreed. However, another memory came to the surface. My son was standing in the living room at age twenty, telling he was gay. His head was down, his words mumbled, and after he finished he looked to us as though we would cast him out. I'm sure he thought what I think now: This is the end.

This is the end. But it was not for him. There was anger, but it was introspective. I hated myself for having pushed Christianity into every aspect of my life. I loathed the idea that I had, unknowingly, voted to restrict my son's rights. My wife recovered first, crushing him in a hug and assuring him it wouldn't change her love towards him, but he was looking at me. I had been the one to denounce gay marriage at the dinner table, after all. The roots of Christ ran so deep in my blood that it would have been easier for me to throw him to the curb. But his eyes, so like mine, were as pained as they ever had been and I couldn't stand seeing my son like that. I too hugged him with as much force as I could and told him I was sorry if he ever had a tormented thought about where my love would lie. It was with my family, always, and Christ would not come in the way of that. This is the end.

This is the end. The will of Christ and the words of the bible were not cast out of my life either. The indelible ink pierced into my skin depicting the gospel was unchanged, and I kept the Bible in my nightstand, but I no longer kept it at the forefront of my life. I'd like to be clear that I do not regret my faith, for it led me to love my son greater. If I am to meet Him in a few minutes, then let it be on my soul that I kept my family first in my heart. If that's a sin, then the decency of the Lord is an illusion. This is the end.

This is the end. Throughout these ramblings, I can hear different instruments beeping steadily, trying to keep me alive. A vacuous suction of air controlled my breath, refilling my lungs with a mechanical push. I felt a tube be removed from my throat, and while I'm sure it hurt I had no sense of pain. I felt a needle exit my elbow. Had they been drawing blood? A large body hovered over me as it ripped little stickers off of my chest. Something came off of my finger and clicked. One of the beeps was terminated. I heard wheels rolling on tiled floors. I heard doors opening and closing, and at last I felt the little plastic tube come out of my nose. I breathed no more. This is the end.

This is the end. A hand grips my own, though I'm no longer aware of it physically. I feel my family is close to me again. Abby's arthritic fingers stroke my hair as multitudes of tears fall onto my bed. The darkness of my world, previously backlit by the radiation of ceiling lights, fades to the totality of night in its truest form. If love was bottled, such purity would be found in that room... Another kiss, this one just the briefest peck on my forehead. No, it is not a peck... It lingers, but I'm just drifting away... Away, away, and now I realize how heavy my body was just a moment ago. Weep, weep, my children, I thought, I know your sadness and grief cannot be alleviated by any act of man, know that I am well, and that I wish your tears turn swiftly into smiles as you remember our time together. I wanted to add that we will meet again, yet never have I been so unsure as to what comes next as in this moment. But I find it does not trouble me. What comes next will either be a greater adventure than any I've had on Earth, or a return to the nonbeing of pre-birth. Either is fine with me. I hear one last thing; my wife's voice saying, "I love you," yet again, and I feel one last thing: the silent reciprocation of those words in every fiber of my soul. This is the end.