JACKSON

I wasn't scared when it was my time to go.

Dying isn't like how people describe it. It isn't quick and painless, joy and catharsis over heartache. It's slow, tedious, and just when you think you're ready to leave, your body gets a second wind.

My organs gave out one by one as my son and daughter, both adults, watched from my bedside. Their mother held my hand and stroked my thin skin. We all cried.

I wasn't sure what would come after I closed my eyes for the final time. But I knew I would miss this. I would miss my life. I had lived the hell out of it.

It took days after I was admitted for my body to shut down. But it eventually did, predictably. Every morning was a bit more difficult than the one preceding.

My breaths became shallower. My thoughts became cloudier. I felt it happening, and my family saw it. If I would've had the strength, I would've begged them to leave so that wasn't the last image they'd have of me. I know how last images work.

They don't fade, no matter how many others you have.

And one night, with my daughter's hand clutching mine and my son crying on my shoulder, I closed my eyes and felt the energy drain from my body. The life slipped out of me like smoke, like it was never mine to hold forever. Only for a short while.

When I open my eyes again, the world isn't how I remember. It looks the same, but somehow different. There's no blinding light, no flash of my life before my eyes. It simply looks like I've been transported to a different time, a point in my life I know very well.

I look down at my hands. I don't see papery skin with veins just underneath, I don't see knobby elbows and rickety knees. Instead, I see vitality and life. I see strong muscles and smooth, even-toned skin. I see myself as a young man.

I look around, blinking against the sunlight pouring down on me. It warms my skin, actually warms it, for the first time in years.

I'm on DePaul's campus. I haven't been here since I graduated when I was 22 years old, and it looks no different. I realize I'm standing in the middle of the quad, and everything is the same. I can see the library, the building named after my grandfather, the science building, and University Hall.

I smile to myself. Death took me home.

"Jackson."

I hear my name from a voice faraway and distant. It dawns on me that I'm not alone. There are plenty of other people milling around, nothing about their faces discernible. But at the same time, it's a comfort they're here. It's nice to be around people.

"Jackson."

I hear my name again, and this time I'm sure of it.

I spin around and the fuzziness fades away. There she is, standing up from a blue picnic table. She's wearing a light green, short-sleeved dress that falls to her knees. Her hair is in lush curls around her shoulders, bouncing as she tosses her head to smile at me.

It's her.

"Piano girl," I say, and my voice comes out the way I always knew it. Sound, firm, youthful. Not crackled and broken, how it'd grown to be as I aged.

"I've been waiting," she says, taking airy steps towards me. I've never seen a light shine brighter than the halo of sun that surrounds her. She surpasses heavenly; she is an angel. "I've been waiting for you."

72 years have passed since we said goodbye. Since I held her in my arms and felt her take the same shallow breaths that just escaped my living body.

I never stopped thinking about her, but my life had to go on. She told me that it did. I got married, had children and grandchildren. I was the head of my department and chair of the hospital. I did everything I set out to do.

But I had lived it all without her. I had aged without her, grown and learned life lessons she would never experience. I shed my skin and became a new person; one she had never touched.

But in this moment, I'm who I used to be. I'm 18, a freshman in college, and hopelessly in love with a girl who exudes light and love and purity. I'm young and in love with the girl who showed me the beauty of living.

I take her hands. When I touch her, I see everything I never forgot. I see her laughing at a stupid joke I told, head thrown back and eyes pinched tightly shut. I see her sitting at the piano bench, her spine impossibly straight as her fingers fly over the keys. I see her face tucked close to mine as she smiles in the morning, hair a mess and eyes bleary.

I don't see the DePaul hat with the pompom on top. Instead of baldness, I see a full, healthy head of shiny red hair. Instead of dull, sick eyes, I see ones that are glistening with youth.

I see everything she was supposed to be, meant to be.

I see the wedding we never had, children of ours never born. I see a life that begged to be lived.

"I'm here now," I say, tucking a strand of her soft hair behind her ear. I can't take my eyes off of her. She looks so different than the last time I saw her.

Final images don't fade, except when they do.

Here now, together wherever we are, there's no time constrictions. No expectations to live up to, no rules to abide by. Now, it's just the two of us, forever.

How it used to be, how it once was. How we began, how we ended, how we've started all over again, as kids in love.