They said that with death, there's a light that you seem to be traveling from. You experience an out-of-body sort of phenomenon, and your spirit leaves behind your body, and moves through this white light. Some people think that your deceased loved ones will show up, let you know that you'e dying. All of this is a lie. No out-of-body experience, no miracles - just pain, and lots of it. All Jack Twist had was himself, his heart, his head, and his pain. The pain made it hard for him to recognize himself, his heart, or his head. Pain was in control, now, and it would drive him all the way home.
For someone who generally did not like to think, Jack Twist always seemed to end up thinking about things. Unfortunately, the reason he didn't like to think in the first place was the fact that he always seemed to overthink things. But what was there to overthink, when you were never going to think again? Optimism had never even been an option in this situation; his mind had just just replayed Ennis' concern for what people would physically do to them if they admitted they were - but they weren't, and they only felt that way for each other! What did it matter now, though? Bleeding out on the side of the road - Jack knew that there was no way in hell he was ever seeing Ennis after this. Or anyone, generally.
So he thought of the conversations they could have had, the conversations they did have but he could have worded differently, the conversations they could have drawn out, the conversations they never would have had. It was an endless list, and Jack had spent the last few years piling all of these 'conversations' up in a list, somewhere in his brain, and when it came time to think, whether he liked it or not - with Ennis always came this sort of thing. To say that Jack loved him was maybe over the top, but maybe it wasn't. Either way, he had never told Ennis he loved him. Ennis had never told him he loved him. That was just another forbidden part of their relationship. Ironically, it had beent he part he had always best understood, and the part he wished he hadn't accepted so willingly now.
Breathing came in spastic fits in between coughing spells. Jack honestly couldn't tell you what color his shirt had originally been; the blood stained it so deeply. He was bleeding out, he knew - je just preferred not to think of it that way. He was dying. Albeit the bluntness of it, he didn't have to admit that Ennis had gotten it right. What was worse, he had gotten it worse but been so unable to capture the pain with his words that Jack had definitely to been expecting this. Not that he had been expecting this - but he'd just kept hoping the pain would go away, and it was getting worse and worse. It wasn't Ennis' fault, though.
"Thell getcha withugh tire irn, boy."
They sure did, Ennis.
Jack didn't get nearly enough time to think. In another sense, he got too much time to think. All he was sure of, before he slipped into the dark abyss,was that he'd wished, if anything, they would have allowed the three-word-sentence - "I love you" - spoken. There was no doubt that both of them felt it.
"Ennis damn del Mar," Jack managed to choke out with his last breath, "I'm glad I didn't know how to quit you."