You Weren't Ready Before

“I’ve come to speak do you.”

“Really? I thought you’d never show up.”

“No, I always arrive. I was biding my time. You weren’t ready before.”

“I asked you to meet with me and you didn’t respond.”

“Like I said, you weren’t ready before.”

“I told you I was.”

“You were not.”

“I told you. I was.”

“Do you not think that after 10,000 years I might know how these things work?”

“I guess you’re right, but I wanted to come with you before now.”

“I know you did.”

“I’m sorry.” 

“That’s alright, it’s time to come with me.”

Michael hadn’t expected to cry when it happened. He expected to feel—he wasn’t sure exactly. Relief? Closure? Some sense of safety? Instead he just wondered how many things he might have done. Much to his surprise, this was not Michael’s fault. Drunk driving. That’s how he would go. Of all the times in his life he could have been finished, of course it would be like this. 

A dark hood on a cloaked figure. That’s what Michael saw. Nothing special, nothing he hadn’t expected. This was, however, surprisingly tangible. Bright glowing lights and ethereal gates were nowhere to be seen. Instead Michael watched his own body in slow motion, a blurry afterimage of the life he’d been living. A hazy impression of a world he had once longed to leave.

Death was not impatient. He allowed Michael his thoughts, allowed him the courtesy of time he no longer had. Michael had spent hours of his life imagining the creature before him. A romanticized version of Death had often flashed under his eyelids before drifting off to sleep. This picture had grown less beautiful as Michael had drifted farther down below layers of cloudy smoke tinged with arsenic. Eventually he forgot how to be disgusted by the stench.

 Michael was born stubborn. His family said he came out screaming and stopped as soon as people expected him to continue. When he started to sink he refused to wonder where it came from. He slept and ate and carried on, but eventually he allowed death to get the better of him. Not Death, but the idea of death. No one allows Death to do anything. They demand his presence of try their very hardest to keep him at bay.  

People always said that these things would get better with time; that Michael would magically rise above the cloudiness. Michael had never believed them. He had begged and pleaded for an audience with the one who be believed would save him. Death had never answered his call. He knew better than to trust those like Michael, those who sent him letters and gave him gifts. 

Michael’s messages were never answer, and while he cursed to the stars for the lack of response, he was grateful. In his time waiting to great Death like a new lover, he learned to wait for him like an old friend. 

He learned that you can grieve and cry and hate the world for what you have lost, but Death will find a way to cheat at his own game. He stopped asking death to come knocking. He did not forget him either. He tried at contact again every so often, but in the end he waited his turn. Only then did Death finally allow him to truly live. 

“Are you ready to go?” Death inquired.

“Yes.”

“Would you like to go?”

“No, I would rather stay.”

“You accepted my gifts.”

“Your gifts?”

“Your life.”

“Thank you.”

“No Michael, thank you.”

Then, hand in hand, they walked through the ivory clouds and into another life.