Prelude

Prelude

There are many things people will tell you happened when they “almost died”.  Their life flashed before their eyes; they saw a bright white light that was “warm and welcoming”; some even saw a beloved dead relative telling them in an ethereal voice to turn around, because it wasn’t their time yet.

Personally, I think those people are full of shit.  I’ve died and come back more times than I can even remember anymore, and never saw any of those things.  But maybe I don’t get those perks because I’m not like those people…because I’m not really human.  I suppose it’s possible that it’s strictly that particular breed of mortals that get the luxurious end to their short, simple lives.  You’d think He would give us the bonus material, considering the fact that we have to experience death over and over again, and most mortals only go through it one time.  Just one of His mysteries, I guess. 

I have come to truly hate His mysteries.

One thing that I have learned throughout my existence that really sticks with me is the way death means different things to different individuals.  Some fear it, some long for it, some chase after it, some run from it, and still others use it as a tool because they cannot experience it.

Death – for me, anyway – isn’t bad, or scary…it’s mostly uneventful and ordinary.  Sometimes it’s painful, but the pain always passes fairly quickly.  Because my kind exists outside the mortal world, we can’t contract diseases, our cells can’t mutate, and we rarely live one life for more than twenty or thirty years at a time, so we’re exempt from most of the more gruesome and depressing ways that mortals pass on.  I suppose that’s our bonus gift; we have to live and die over and over again for eons, but at least we don’t have to spend months or years in a hospital bed first, or watch our bodies decay before our eyes.  If the body is gone, there’s no reason for us to be left in place.

This, of course, doesn’t mean we can’t be injured…