That janky toilet seat always leaned left, the toilet paper holder too. In the early morning the body signaled what it would feel like later in life. Early morning or late night it was hard to tell which was which, they got tangled. If there was a better time to go it would be night. Morning paired better with birth; the night, death. Best just to not wake up at all, to go to bed and that’s it.

His hair was falling out. He dreamt his teeth were too. The body expels unwanted parts. He steadied himself and pushed with his legs and arms in one motion: up! Then he crept his way through the room stepping up through the doorway and around the corner to the right. He saw himself move this way and was keenly aware of his age. The coffeemaker was ready. The lights on the shed outside were framed in the picture window as always. Life was an imprint of itself repeated each day the same.

He’d spent the day gardening and now he was paying for it. Those muscles you didn’t know you had until you crouched for a couple hours or snipped limbs, raked. His old leather gloves were so wet and stiff with mud he stood them upright by a vent in the floor to dry them out and in the dark they looked like sea creatures, starfish, or like his own hands, removed.

They said for the dermatitis he should use the medicated shampoo twice a week and one of the potential side effects was hair loss. But make sure you do it twice a week because if you don’t, there could be hair loss. Either way, hair loss. He poured a coffee and got back to his spot, the corner of the sofa. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. The lights on the shed went off at 6:30. There was another half hour still. The clock on the far wall wasn’t chiming but made a seizing sound on the hour like it wanted to but couldn’t. He leaned sideways too. And remembered a dream from the night before, a place they used to live, they were cleaning it out. There was a part of the house they hadn’t been in for years with boxes of old beer bottles and a friend coming he’d known for a long time. It was an all-around cheerful feeling. The past. He could go back and play those old songs sometimes in his sleep. Raking out the detritus from last fall. Scooping the dead leaves up with his hands. Gathering them in a bucket and dumping it in the pile of yard scraps. The smell of the daphne odora. A sun break. The color of the sky. Another spring.

The way to beat death was to go outside because out here everything was always dying but nature had a way of turning death into just another chapter of life. Like taking a nap or going to bed.

And when he woke in the morning would he remember any of this? Parts he’d want to, other parts not. Some expelled in the soil with the rest.

Now he was young again swinging an ax, splitting wood. Like the dog sniffing something on the breeze, there was a scent of some far-off remembrance stirring in the earth, reminding him it was time. Time to live again, not time to die.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, death

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, mid-life crisis, pacific northwest, prose, spirituality