I don’t know why, but I’ve always had a strange, almost familiar relationship with death. This isn’t a depressive fantasy or dark thoughts – it’s moreโฆ curiosity.
My limitless empathy, which is sometimes my greatest gift and at the same time my heaviest burden, allows me not just to think, but to feel what a person might feel on the brink of this departure.
This is the purest, most distilled form of solitude. Imagine, you are going on a journey, but this time without luggage. You can’t take a loved one, nor your favorite book. This is an absolutely solo mission. You and your consciousness are heading to where everything you’ve known until now, ends. This is a journey to the point where your brain, this brilliant, but sometimes terribly chaotic projector, finally shuts off the film we call “life.” The light goes out, the screen goes black.
And I am a person for whom thinking is not just a process, but a form of existence. Thought is an independent character in a constant, silent dialogue with me. I think even when thinking isn’t necessary at all; I sometimes overclock my own brain, like an obsolete laptop that has a limit, and if I overheat it – it will explode.
So sometimes, when I get tangled in this paradigm of existence, I ask myself: What will be that last frame? That very last thought, after which I won’t be able to think anymore?
My brain isn’t planning to shut down, after all. It will work until the last second, until the last impulse of the last neuron. And right at that moment, on that edge, when reality is already dissolving and time loses meaning, what will this crazy, idea-filled mind of mine think?
Probably, something boundlessly banal and at the same time, boundlessly human. Something that, against the backdrop of this whole cosmic drama, will simply be ridiculous:
“What the hell is this white light? I was expecting something more creative. What is this crap! Take me back, you sons of bitches!”
“Damn it! I won’t get to watch the second season of Dark Matter?! Are you kidding me, you grim reaper, you could have waited one more week!”
Or maybe, nothing grand at all. Maybe the last thought will simply be: “Huh, finallyโฆ let’s see what’s over here.”
This is the greatest paradox of human nature. We create theories, write books, make films about the end of the world, about the meaning of life, but in reality, in that last second, we’ll probably be most upset that we didn’t see the finale of our favorite series. Why? Because that will be the easiest, it will be a defense mechanism.
And the edge. That freezing moment when thought stops. For me, this is the biggest tragedy and the biggest secret. What is that moment like, when you still “are,” but you no longer “think”? Is it silence? Emptiness? Or simplyโฆ a transition?
I don’t know. And maybe the whole charm is in this not-knowing. This is the one journey for which we will never find a map. And that one single thought that we can never write down, never share.
And my reader, when I die, read this Aubade again and know that my last thought will be exactly this: “Oh, in that Aubade I was writing about the last thoughtโฆ mmmโฆ last thought, last thoughtโฆ thought, last, lโฆ lโฆ laโฆ son of a bโฆ.”
