The Waiting Room

 

It’s dark here – well, dim. It’s like a foggy, overcast midwinter day just before sunset, but in a huge grey room with no seams or corners to differentiate floor from walls from ceiling. I’m not quite sure where I am or how I arrived.

I don’t remember how I died, whether accident, heart attack or suicide. I do know I’ve definitely died. My name escapes me, but I know it’ll come to me. It’s like being newborn – or waiting to be born. I know I had parents and probably siblings, but I don’t know who they were, if they were there at the end, or if they’d gone on ahead.

It happened strangely. I expected my soul to be sucked out of my body by the great Electrolux in the sky and hurtled toward the light as I was taught. No. Instead it was like someone forgetting to pay the electric bill: Out go the lights – even the perception of it through eyelids. And then sound. The silence brings you up short. Not even a hum, rumble or beep. No smells, no taste and no feel. Imagine your body going to sleep but without the pins and needles feel. Just – nothing.

I guess I was shell-shocked, stunned into fetal position inside. Then I felt the movement. Funny, I hadn’t expected that. I didn’t feel anyone lift the body or disconnect needles or tubes. And I can’t say I actually felt the movement. I simply knew I was moving. I didn’t feel the body being lifted off the gurney onto the cold metal slab –I couldn’t feel the cold metal. I was aware of it sliding into the long, narrow refrigerated box and closing the door. I couldn’t feel the toe tag or wiggle my toes. Of course not.

I thought, wait a minute. I’m in trouble now. Freezing to death didn’t worry me –how often death is a figure of speech! – I needed to get out. I didn’t know what would happen if I were still there when the embalming started. I had to start doing something.

So, I lay on my back, put my hands up and pushed. You might think that was silly. There should be some cosmic escape hatch. Well, if it existed, I didn’t know about it. So I pushed like you would against the inside of the lid of a coffin if you were ever trapped in one. Lack of air didn’t concern me: I’d stopped breathing when I lost all of the other senses. I pushed and pushed and finally felt something give. I was free. I wasn’t in the long metal fridge. I wasn’t in the morgue. I didn’t know where I was.

I looked around. I saw no cherubs with harps, no heavenly host singing, “Alleluia”. No offense to anyone’s belief system, but they weren’t there. Maybe they hadn’t arrived yet. To my relief, there were also no little red characters with arrowhead tails, pointy horns and pitchforks stabbing at me. That at least gave me hope.

I walked – strolled, really – looking around at nothing, looking for something. That’s when I realized I was here, wherever here is.

I know I’m dead. Whatever the catastrophe, I didn’t survive. So – I guess I just wait in the great grey nothingness.

Maybe they hadn’t expected my death, even in the afterlife. Perhaps they’re still preparing. Maybe God’s second-in-command, or the maid-angel or someone is dusting the judgement room or making a pot of tea. How long could that take, right? I’m sure they know I’m here. So, I guess I’ll just sit down on the floor and wait.