I dreamt of endings. Frayed strands of yarn, a dead end road, storm clouds rolling out and giving way to blue, the check arriving on a scarred table in a pub at the end of the world. Every night the dreams began at the end and only faded to black like the last scene of an old film. I spent my daylight hours trying to recreate the scene that had come before, but there was nothing. No hint of a remembered dream pulling at the edges of my mind. Just the ending.
Then one morning there was only the last bite of a muffin left in the box. The next day only the last sip of cold coffee left in the cup freshly poured. The following afternoon there was only the wrap up of a meeting. The next evening only the last mile to drive home. I spent my nighttime hours trying to recreate the scenes that must have come before, but there was nothing. No hint of a remembered life pulling at the edges of my mind. Only endings.
A visit to my doctor, a referral to a neurologist, the last few minutes of a consultation, the table leaving the MRI scanner with no memory of going in. The assurance that everything was fine as the doctor left the room. Getting up from a chair in the psychiatrist’s office with an appointment for another session next week, maybe you have some unremembered trauma, we’ll discuss it more next time. this session was very enlightening. I was only left more in the dark. What had I said? What had I told this stern looking woman with the wire frames and fountain pen? I couldn’t remember walking in the office let alone the words that had left my mouth. Only the ending.
Weeks continued on the same way. Dreams of last breaths, falling leaves, the sputtering of a wick in a pool of wax, orgasm without touch, so many backs as people walked away. Days spent consuming last gulps of coffee, last bites of food, the last chapter of every novel. Meetings wrapping up, arriving home without the drive, stepping out of the shower dripping wet without stepping in, hanging up the phone without remembering who I had been talking to. Back to the neurologist, “are you sure? are you sure there isn’t something there? look again.” Back to the psychiatrist, “it’s all slipping away. make it stay. make me more than a last moment. i am only an ending.”
Finally opening my eyes to a sterile room in a white gown with tiny faded green dots, just as the light from the setting sun was hitting the dresser on the far side of the room, illuminating the vase of wilting flowers and a water glass with one final sip. I didn’t rise. I didn’t question how this had all happened. It was just another ending.
I had often missed the first buds in the spring, a storm rolling in on a sunny day, my heart skipping a beat when I opened the door for a first date. I hadn’t savored being handed the menu to choose, reaching out to take a cup of coffee, fresh and steaming, lighting an unburned wick, turning to the title page of an unread book, letting my hands wander over a body I knew would soon be wrapped around my own. I had seldom thought, “this is the beginning. this moment is where it all starts.” I was made of forgotten beginnings.
But the endings, when I was satiated, sad, shattered, thrilled, lost, content… alone, then I knew. Then I stopped to remember that there was a beginning to this ending. There was a spot where I decided I was all in, without the realization that life is just endings, as spring is just the end of winter. As I lay in the ultimate end, alone without even the memory of arriving in this place, I could only feel joy for the reminder that my life had been full of beginnings I never took the time to see. That the way the light was fading in the room was really just the start of the last night. Only the beginning.
The beginning of the last night when it all became clear. When I walked out of the sterile room and saw every person who passed me as the joining of ovum and sperm, spinning strands of DNA, an atom of carbon. The hallway darkened to a single point of light in the distance of a cavernous emptiness. The faded dots of my gown floated into the darkness like fireflies to guide my body shed of clothing and worries.
I followed as I dissolved into cells, into elements, into galaxies. I spun through the darkness with eight billion other swirling clouds of hydrogen and helium, light and heat, heavy with potential. We had been destroyers. We had been the riders of the apocalypse leaving destruction in our wake. The fellers of trees, the bullets through flesh, the plastic suspended in salt water, the cement over bones. We had been eight billion little endings. Eight billion little endings swirling into one cloud, one singular point of light, one spot blinking in a universe of unnamed black. A heavy mass of souls in a tiny singularity. Waiting. Just another beginning.
Published in the 2023 Edition of the Elgin Community College Spire Literary Magazine