There's something to be said for dying.
What, precisely, George has no idea. But she knows it was an event worth marking, maybe even the kind of thing you savor like a fine wine. Which is difficult to do, granted, as you're being pulverized by a piece of hygiene-minded space flotsam, but two years to the day and she's thinking that it couldn't have been that simple. Could it? Could that really be… it?
Girl, meet cause of death. Cause of death, meet girl.
You'd think an introduction like that would be the beginning of a marvelous friendship.
Instead, here she is, wondering why the fuck she ordered wine when she doesn't know the difference between a Merlot and Rube's left pinkie toe. Her reap was done hours ago but she doesn't feel like waffling it up right now. She has repeatedly discovered that ever since becoming a grim reaper, her misery does not love company.
She pours another glass of the overly fermented juice (she doesn't have to be a connoisseur to know that this stuff tastes like shit, even if it does cost nine dollars a glass) and watches it lap at the rim. Maybe if she finishes it really fast she'll have an excuse to go home, fall asleep, and not talk to anyone for the next year while she tries to figure out exactly what it is she wants to say about dying. There's got to be something to say. She's sure if she drinks enough she'll figure it out.
Most of her reaps say something. Not usually particularly poignant or insightful, but something. She hopes by that the time she goes… wherever… she'll have learned her lesson from them. She'll have something smart to say. Something she'd want to write home about—well, assuming she liked to write letters and/or talk to her mother.
But her reap tonight just smiled.
A one Helen Dunnaby. She just looked at her own body sprawled out on the bathroom floor as if she slipped and died every day. She didn't have any questions, protestations, declarations, invitations (George hated reaping post-pubescent teenage boys)… nothing. No "wait, that's me?" or "you mean I'm like… dead dead?" or "do I get to go to Heaven now?"
Not that George has the answers. Not that she wants to. Hell, she doesn't even usually like to talk to her reaps. Sometimes it makes her feel dirty, like she's fraternizing with the enemy. Because every time she gets too close, she starts thinking about those "what ifs" and wondering if everyone really does have to die.
George scowls. Wine wasn't getting her anywhere, aimless wandering for two hours tonight hadn't gotten her anywhere, and the misery-without-company thing didn't seem to be getting her very far either. Grabbing her jacket, she shelled out the last of her Fun Fund money to pay for her stomachache and headed to Der Wafflehaus.
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Just her and Rube tonight. Somehow that seems appropriately grim.
"What did you say when you realized you were dead?" George asks as she focuses her eyes intently on the oatmeal-for-dinner that Kiffany just gave her.
Rube gives her a strange look. "It was a long time ago. Can't say that I remember."
"I really freaked out when I died, didn't I?" She pokes a raisin and buries it underneath syrup.
Rube shrugs. "Not every day you get hit by a toilet seat from space."
She eats some oatmeal; he pretends to read his newspaper while watching her pretend to be making casual conversation.
"Did you freak out, Rube?"
He smiles. "No, not really."
"Oh."
He folds the newspaper back. "So what's eatin' you, peanut? Or do we get to play another round of twenty questions before I get to find out?"
She watches the oatmeal plop off her spoon and back into the bowl. She sighs, lets it clank down into the bowl. Folding up her fingers, she finally looks at him. "You think dying is important, right?"
"The most important thing about living."
She tilts her head at that little nugget of Rube-brand-wisdom before going on. "Well, what if it's not important? What if it's all some big game we're playing because we don't know any better? Who knows why the fuck we die, Rube? What if, at the end of the day, dying is no more important that choosing what pair of socks you put on?"
Her voice raised higher and higher with each subsequent question and she feels like she can't breathe and goddamnit if Rube doesn't get that smug 'I know everything because I'm some kind of secret fucking Zen master' look off his face she'll actually kill him.
He smiles and sips his coffee, picking his newspaper back up. "Who says what socks we wear aren't important, peanut?"
And he won't say another word on the subject for the rest of the night.
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George runs after dropping the letter in the mailbox, all too aware that her mother knows Millie by now and will have a very unpleasant reaction if she sees her 'skanky ass' here again.
She knows it's better that way. Knows that trying to re-live a life her family desperately needs to let go of isn't going to do anyone any good.
But that doesn't mean that she's ready to believe that death is unimportant… or that she's ready to give up on them.
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Dear Mrs. Lass,
Your daughter and I went to the same school. I know it's been a long time since she died, and that this probably seems really weird. I just wanted to let you know that… I just wanted to tell you that I could see she loved her family. Even her little sister, who wasn't really invisible.
I miss her. I know you do, too. So I thought maybe tonight we could miss her together, even though we don't know each other.
From,
A friend
P.S. She also really loved your moist mashed potatoes.
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George watches her mom read in the dim porchlight.
She knows Rube will kill her if he finds out. That she'll probably lose more memories for doing this, that those tears her mom's crying are her fault. But the smile—the real kind, not the fake one her mom likes to use for family portraits—is also her doing. That sometimes letters and socks are important things, more important than objects hurtling out of the sky at the speed of death.
She thinks of Helen Dunnaby who spoke volumes by walking into those lights without a second's hesitation, her arms wide open like she could embrace the world.
And she thinks, maybe, there is nothing to be said for dying. That maybe, when it's your time, you make sure you've already written home.
So when you do finally meet death, you can just smile, open up your arms and and say… hello.