The Day After I Died (1)

GS Jackson

Sunday, January 10. 2010

I always thought I would die in February. February was always the coldest month for me and the earth around me always seemed like dead - so that would have been appropriate.

But I died during spring time.

I died on the 6th of April, Tuesday 2055. I lived a ripe old age of 82 years young. I lived the last years of my life in a retirement quarters and other than my fellow death mates who shared the quarters with me my best companion was the human nurse that came in once a week.

I had nothing against the robot nurses; they were very attentive, they listened, and they took very good care of me. But I knew as I talked – spoke about my past and my adventures around the world when I was much younger – they were only recording and uploading it to the sensory “cloud” so it could be used to better tune the human experience engine.

But my human nurse Roger was very kind. He was assigned to me because my medical condition was deteriorating – I showed up on his “death dashboard” as I called it. And because I had no children and never remarried I never opted for the life extension service that most who had grandchildren, or those with great grandchildren had.

I felt my presence on earth had been long enough.

“I have done enough damage,” I told Roger as he inspected my vitals.

He laughed and checked the instruments I was hooked up to. “I think you got a lot more damage to inflict.” He threw back to me. And one of his assistant nurse robots waited patiently behind him.

“I mean with the ladies.” I added.

“I know what you meant. I have heard your stories.”

“So have I,” said the nurse robot nicknamed Al.

I fidgeted in my bed and suddenly I felt weak. Then I just knew. Or maybe I told myself, do it today. “Do it while Roger is here,” I said.

Although I was an organ donor all my younger life, I didn’t invest in a brain backup. I didn’t want someone else to pay money just to greedily scoop up my existence as some funny and happy simulation experience.

Call it old fashioned or maybe I am stubborn.

But I believed everyone had to earn the right to live their life – as they should – not to pay to live my life in a three hour sensory overload in a simulation chamber.

Taking a skinny dip into brain backups, people believed it was to help the human species evolve – because doubling up, tripling up on someone’s entire life of mistakes, loves, pain – makes everyone a better person.

I didn’t agree.

I felt that you needed to make the mistakes to live life. You had to hurt to love. And not having these bad experiences in real time – I believe – was sucking the passion out of society.

And so because of all this – today would be it for me.

My existence footprint would be swept up under the rug.

The only thing left behind would be the hundreds of interactions I had with the nurse robots who patiently listened to my long winded tales, chopped and parsed up my stories, tagged them and indexed them for later lookup.

“How is that girl you like? What’s her name, Betty?” I asked Roger.

He smiled and looked over at me. “Her name is Alicia.”

I frowned at myself, “Where did I get the name Betty?”

“I am not sure.” Roger said and touched the air in front of my bed – but he was touching some touch point that was an indicator or a meter of some sort that showed up inside his glasses.

“So how is she?”

“I wouldn’t know.” He said. And the nurse robot came up behind him, reached out and touched the same place in the air and seemed to scroll down through something.

“You should,” I said.

Roger stopped touching the air above my bed and looked down at me serious. “Mr. Jackson, what do you mean?”

“Life is too short. So what if it doesn’t work out? You tried,” and I went quiet thinking back. “At least you tried. Life is about trying. Too short to not know.”

“So, did you always try?”

I paused and sadly reflected. But then I came back with a sideways grin. “I tried,” I said and we both laughed. The nurse robot joined in the laughter a little late after he uploaded my sound byte.

He seemed to motion in the air to close whatever he was looking at. “Okay, Mr. Jackson, I will be back in a couple of hours to say goodbye. I need to make my rounds.”

And like a little scared child I reached out my hand. “Roger…”

He noticed my pleading and reached out his hand and took mine. “Yes, Mr. Jackson, are you okay?”

I didn’t tell him I was about to die. Instead I said, “I wanted to thank you for being my friend here.”

He laughed. “You got lots of friends here.”

“I mean my human friend.”

He squeezed my hand. “Of course.”

And he squeezed my hand one more time, then turned and was gone.

But he was back within an hour because the instruments attached to me said my heart beat flat lined while I was taking a nap. And because I hadn’t purchased any life packages – I was tagged for do not resuscitate or resurrect.

And within three hours, the nurse robots worked highly efficiently and prepared my body for cremation.

The last thing he did on his shift that night was to attend my funeral. Roger was the only living person in attendance, however five was the official count.

It was a simple ceremony. He read aloud one of my poems as the gathered nurse robots digested, break down phonetically, and pushed up to the ether – stanza by stanza.

“Since my time began
And the time started ticking up to my last hour
To my last minute
Where my eyes are open
But I know they are about to close
I hope as I feel my life slip away
That I have everything to lose
To let go
That in my life I gained it all
To lose it in a last breath
And with that
I force my heart to continue to beat
My lungs will inflate and deflate for one more day
One more hour
I will give God a little more of my soul
But I will punch Shiva in the face
For more of
My life
This thing of mistakes
Where I felt lost most of the time
Or knowingly went in wrong directions
Besides I need more time to apologize
To those who I selfishly stole
Hours of the day
And days of the year
That at first they freely gave
But later tried to reclaim
Arrogantly I know
I made them happy
And they knew I was always a little sad
So I won’t give it back
Because they took from me
My fleeting moments too
Now I just want sixty more sixty minutes
I need more time
I need more life
My life
Because
I spent so much of it
Searching
Waiting
Looking
For you
Now that I found you
Even when we are at this old age
With you beside me
Wrinkled
Weathered
And sagging
You are the most beautiful angel I have ever met
So I need another day
And if I am meant for hell
You are my last experience of Heaven
Even if you are just sitting there
Holding my hand
My life with you
Good and bad
Why would I ever want to ever leave?”

Roger paused before he read the date my poem was written.

“Written on a flight from Sydney to Hong Kong, 8 January 2010.”