Death Approaches

I dreamed I died this morning.

I don't recall how; I simply found myself sitting in the back of a church

looking upon my mourning friends and family.

It didn't seem as if many people had shown up, but it mattered not. Popularity doesn't count when you're no longer among the living.

Suddenly the urge to see myself in the casket possessed me.
I crept down the aisle
ignoring everyone om the sides of me.
I needed to know how stiff, how much darker
I appeared as a soulless lump of clay.
However when I reached the casket,
sheets lining the innards were all I found.
I looked up to spot no picture of myself surrounded
by a reef of beautifully arranged flowers.

The only thing to conform it was my funeral
was the congregation that tripled in size
when I turned around, filled with familiar (but mostly blurry) faces.
[It's hard to take in that many images even within a dream.]

I searched for my family, none of which sat in the front pews.
They were instead replaced with classmates I hardly talked to
in yellow graduation gowns.
But behind them sat my mother, my sister, and various other
close relatives from that side of the family.
My mother and sister were able to see me, and we spoke,
though the details of the conversation escapes me
for that is when I woke.

I've been a semi-firm believer that death strikes in threes.
As I've written before, my maternal grandfather passed back in May.
What I failed to express to you all, and even myself,
is that my paternal grandmother passed in July.
Perhaps I had become partially unmoved
by death after my grandfather's death
or perhaps it was because she had been showing signs
of reaching her end since his funeral.
Either way, it should be known that I miss her.
As with my grandfather, I didn't spend nearly enough time with her.
And as with him, I am disappointed in myself.

All who's left now is my maternal grandmother,
and though she has with case been depressed
since her husband's death, I doubt she will be
the one to complete this trio of death.
For a time I feared it would be my mother,
gone before she completed her new set of goals in life.
But in the back of my mind, I believed
it would actually be me to die next.

Rather it be by vehicular accident or stray bullet
or natural disaster or a lack of physical health,
I never pictured myself living for long.
As a child, I looked at adults and couldn't picture myself older.
This was more so in the physical sense:
my skin winkling and sagging,
my hair balding or graying,
my stomach getting fatter.

But in my teenage years,
it became more of a maturity issue.
I couldn't see myself ever becoming a proper adult.
Sure I saw myself as a novelist,
but I saw no means of actually aspiring to greatness,
no day job that I would be happy with or fit in.

It's weird. Most people hold on
to the ignorant belief that they're invincible
for as long as possible, and here I was
already imagining my own death.
Now I have a wake to go along with it.

I think this fear is what has crippled my will to write.
It halted the honesty I held with myself.
But I think this dream may have shaken me back to life.
For my progression into adulthood's sake, I hope it has.

So, my fellow young adults,
don't let the fear of death (or failure)
ever hold you back, because you can either
be the guy who did nothing until his dying breath
or the fellow who fought his way through life to death..
Word.