Dying.

The thing I remember most about dying is the music. I had just turned the radio to the country station when that car came across the median and hit me. There was glass and metal then I was upside down then on my side with my face on pavement and all I could do was focus in on the incredibly happy singer doing his beer drinking song live while thousands cheered. Then it was dark. The cheering continued, got louder. That’s when, I guess, I died.

Let me stop to say this: this is not a story from a dead person. This isn’t from beyond the grave or actually a story that you find out, surprise, is told by the crazy nut sister who actually killed the protagonist. I survived. I was dead for thirty six minutes. I survived, for what it’s worth.

The thing about dying once is that you always know you’ll have to do it again. I don’t know what it was like for other survivors, if they remember pain or live with a sense of peace or whatever. For me it was kind of a blank, numb experience with a horrible soundtrack. It was the coming back to life part that was painful. After the cheering the next thing I remember is the pain. Tightness in my chest, tube in my throat, stabbing near my knee, a swollen eye.

This really isn’t a story about my death. This isn’t a story about the recovery, either. I spent time in the hospital, my mom cried, my sister brought cake, I did a lot of physical therapy, counselors tried to speak with me about the whole death thing, my aunt swears I saw Jesus (I didn’t) and her church family came to pray over me. There was a lot of pain and anger and profanity. I threw a bed pan. But this isn’t about all of that.

About six months after my death I was sitting on my mom’s patio looking out over the buttercups, watching my dog chase birds. I was sitting there because, while in the hospital, my mom cancelled my apartment lease and moved everything back to her house because she believed I’d need constant care during my recovery. She didn’t ask me before she did this.

I was sitting there, watching my dog, drinking tea, with my best friend Neil. This story is about what happens because of the conversation we had.

“You really aren’t milking this whole ‘I was dead’ thing enough,” he said to me.

“I should have taken that call from Maury then?”

“No, I don’t mean that. I mean right now, as you’re doing your whole recovery pity me shit you could be doing everything you wanted without people questioning you.”

“Like rob a bank?”

“No,” he said, “like traveling the world on credit.”

“People do that all the time without dying.”

My dog, Velcro, had returned to me. I wouldn’t have ever told anyone this but Velcro was the thing that made me happiest in those days. He didn’t look at me with pity, didn’t talk about expanding doors because of the wheelchair, and was the same giant dumb dog as before I died. He sat down next to me, his head on my knee.

“People do. You don’t. You could go do anything right now and if someone says you shouldn’t have you could just start crying and go “oh I died and saw grandpa and came back” and all would be forgiven.”

I laughed. Neil was the only one who treated me like I died on purpose, for the attention. He would berate me for it and I loved him because of it. I also knew that, the day after I woke up in the hospital, he couldn’t come in my room because he was crying.

“Think about it,” he said. “I’m gone, I’ll see you later.”

He left. I did think about it. I sat up in bed that night, throwing crayons at the ceiling, thinking. If I had really died that night, if that had been the last song I heard and the last meal I ate and the last rain and the last everything, would have I died being okay with how everything turned out?

No.

Not enough green. I changed crayons.

I didn’t like my job, I hadn’t traveled north of Tennessee, and I was still in love with the girl. Neil was right. If I quit my job, traveled, disappeared for a year everyone would write it off as being therapeutic. If I found her, got her to talk to me, it would probably be out of pity.

I switched to my left hand, purple. Flick the wrist, thunk the ceiling, bend forward to retrieve, lean back.

I couldn’t handle pity, much less her pity. I couldn’t stay where I was, though.

“Shit.”

I tossed the crayons off the bed and turned the light off. Velcro jumped up next to me and waited as I leaned myself back. He put his head on my chest. In the dark it was easy for me to remember dying. The applause, loud cheering, hot pavement and metal. That could have been it. That could have been the end and I would have never known how it turned out.