Without Significance

People don't die anymore the way they used to.

It used to be that people knew what camaraderie was, running into battles with swords and guns and cannons blazing, like all the good stories. It used to be that people died in the arms of others who prayed for them, softly and sincerely, in their final moments. Men holding each other because they had to, because there was no one else, and for an instant there could be unfathomable and unconditional love because there had to be. Then, the fires would roar and they'd be up again, leaving the fallen alone and cold but always within memory, always tingling on the edge of remembrance. Someone would write a song about them later and call it something simple and sweet so others might wonder what it's really all about.

Now there's just needles and white bed sheets and pills and strange little containers and bags with tubes that weren't there the week before. Dying alone with strangers and a strict deadline to keep. Six months. Six weeks. A few hours, maybe. Depends on charity. Depends on the money. Just depends.

The movies like to think the saddest part is letting go. Talking to the dying with some prepared speech that makes an audience weep and they don't even know why. Sometimes there isn't a reason at all, really. Just because it's an opportunity to feel something more than numbness. An opportunity to feel more than what we can muster for the people we know in our lives that needed to see it. Because that's all we are: numb. Numbed to the killing and the dying alone in hospital beds. Hearing another "I always loved you, always will" or "I forgave you a long time ago" while holding hands until one of them goes limp is a refreshing little twist of angst compared to the usual droll gray-white that always seems to end before the punch line.

A man sleeps in an otherwise empty bed. He's just turned eighty-four years old. A long time ago, he used to deliver papers on a bike that wasn't his. The man down the street named Mr. Johnson used to talk to him every day on his routes. He died a long time ago. He never remembered that kid's name, but he thought about it sometimes when he wasn't thinking.

His children call him on his birthday every year. They can never come up because it's always so busy at home. He doesn't mind though. It's understandable, and he loves them anyways because that's what fathers do. He has pictures of his grandchildren and old photos in black and white. He doesn't remember the faces well anymore, but he likes to look at them and try all the same when there's nothing better to do.

His wife died a few years ago. She was the prettiest girl in school when they first kissed, and her eyes were still the same old blue when she died, only they didn't twinkle so much as they had then and her hands were stiffer and colder than they had a right to be. Now there's no one to listen to him play his piano in the other room but walls filled with faces and an old TV he forgets to turn off.

On a warm sunny morning in May, the man wakes to find himself something to eat. As he reaches for a glass in the cupboard above the sink, his heart seizes. The glass falls and chips the edge of the counter. He lays on the linoleum floor of his kitchen, gripping his chest as he stares at a spot of black lint beneath the fridge. As his vision blurs, he tries to think of what Heaven will look like, but the pressure in his chest makes it hard to think, and all he can see is that fuzzy black spot. He can't think of anything else to do but wait, so he does, and dies.

No hands to hold. No sudden final call from loving relatives. No camaraderie. No note on the bedside table. Just the low gasping for breath that has run out. Just another average man's death in just another average town.

Sometimes we try to find reasons and meanings, when everything's over, just because we feel we should, when the reality is there is no reason. Reasons come with things that happen with consequence, and death has no consequence. It simply is. It comes and it goes and the rest of the world moves on because it must move on. Sometimes he's remembered. Most times, he isn't.

It's just the way it goes. I imagine in a hundred years things won't even need a reason anymore. People will just assume there isn't one and leave the guessing and the speeches we didn't get a chance to make to the movies about fake people and real people that didn't have a reason either, until the time comes for us to die too. So we'll slip into that darkness without a thought, without a reason, without a consequence. Without significance.

I guess people just don't die the way they used to anymore.