Take the Next Bus

I met death at a bus stop, on a cold Thursday evening. I think she thought it an apt metaphor. She was a rather disappointing figure, I must say, no black cowl, no scythe, no skulls. She was just a well-dressed woman, sitting beside me, making idle conversation. Though, as I write these words, I cannot yet recall any details about her— was she old or young, tall or short, what was her skin tone or hair color? The distinguishing feature I can remember was a smile that seemed carved into her face like a knife wound.

The other memorable thing about her, of course, was that she asked me if I was ready to die. Although I get the feeling she starts most of her conversations like that— hazard of the job, I suppose.

I told her no, of course; I had a whole lot more life ahead of me than behind.

And she smiled, not unkindly, and said “That’s how you see it now my dear, as you sit on this bus stop with nothing but time. But there will come a time when you’ll think that the best of your life has come and gone, wasted when you were too young to appreciate it.”

I responded to her, indignant (perhaps not the most prudent way to speak to death, but then again no one has ever accused me of having an excess of that virtue). “I’ll feel nostalgic, so what? There’s nothing more than that to it. I think I’d still like to live, thank you very much.”

And Death laughed with a sound like wind chimes under a winter’s breeze “That’s what they all say. And maybe some people rightly say it. But not you, my dear.”

“I’m halfway through university with a very nice internship. And my cousin promised me a very nice job at his company. Even if that fails, I’m industrious; I’m sure I’d be able to work something out.”

“Maybe you could. But you won’t. Do you want to know where you’ll be in a decade?”

And she stared at me with eyes like smoldering coals. In them, I saw myself, dropped out of school, working late at a dead-end job, dreams shattered like broken glass. That visage of me that I saw in Death’s cold stare raised his head and met my eyes.

“I can tell you that I have glimpsed into your future and have seen you in ruin. The cracks are already showing aren’t they? You can feel it. Everyone will leave you Everything will crumble. You are going to fall and no one will pick me back up.”

She leaned closer. “It doesn’t get better. Everything ends in tears and in my cold embrace.”

I looked away.

“Everything that you think you have, everything you had hoped to achieve, all of it is going to leave you. What I do is going to do is a mercy.”

“oh.” It was a small sound that barely escaped through my lips. Death wouldn’t have been able to hear it if not for the grim silence that had settled over the empty bus stop. My head was cradled in my hands, the weight of time and loss pressing over me.

Slowly, I lifted my head and stared again at death. Whatever vision had danced in her eyes previously had since departed. “I think, that I would still like the chance to live. Maybe everything will fall apart, maybe I will through away every shot I’m given. Maybe it will all end in tears like you say. Life sucks and then you die, and all that. But I think that I’d still like to live. Even if everything ends in tears, they will still be my tears. That means that I will have lived for something, won’t it? That I would have loved something?”

“If you want to see it that way. That doesn’t change the fact that everyone will have left you. You will die alone. I would save you that hardship.”

“If I died here, I would still die alone, wouldn’t I?”

“You can describe it that way if you would like to. It won’t lessen the pain when they abandon or betray you, or the reality of being alone.”

“But, for them to leave me, they’d have had to have been there first, wouldn’t they?

There was a moment of soft silence.

It’s really going to hurt, won’t it?” I said.

“Yes, it will. And I am sorry for that.”

“But there will be good times too, to balance out the bad? If you saw how my life would have played out, surely you still saw that there was something good in it?” I could hear the desperation in my voice. I felt like a child again.

“There will be good times, but they will not balance out the bad, my dear. The nights will be far longer than the days.”

“But there will still be light.”

“At times, yes.” She smiled sadly then, I think because she knew what would happen next.

I stood before Death, the Lady that Waits at the End of All Things. All reason and logic seemed to leave me. “I don’t want to die,” I finally told her in a small voice. I felt on the verge of tears.

But, to my shock, she nodded her assent. “Then you won’t die, not yet.”

“Really?”

She rested a hand on my shoulder— I think she may have intended it to be comforting. But as I glanced toward it, her skin faded away and skeletal fingers now rested on my skin.

Only, at the very end of our conversation, did she decide to embrace the motif. It was almost funny; I didn’t laugh.

“Too many people die before their time; I think that it would be a beautiful thing if you got the chance to live even a little bit longer.

But, in half a year, when you have nothing to show for yourself, remember me. And remember that you chose to live. Maybe it will give you some strength.”

She leaned in and embraced me, but it was not the last embrace. I was not returning to her, not yet. There was more for me to do, more life for me to live.

The bus arrived then, old, battered, and run down like buses are. I got on, and, for a moment, it felt like the world shifted. My feet almost stumbled. I looked back, for only the briefest of instants, but the deathly lady at the bust stop had already left. I hoped that we would not meet for a long time.

The bus was sparsely populated, but I didn’t want to be alone just then, so I sat by one of the few occupants, a middle-aged man with rough hands and a scar slashed across his face. He looked tired, but not quite sad, gazing out the side window.

“Can you tell me where this bus is going?” I asked him

He gave me a cracked smile as he said “Onwards, towards the future.”