Journey of an Undone Man

About 13 years ago…

 

Endings have a strange, circular way of feeling like beginnings.

This was the beginning of an end. I lay in what some call final repose. Was I at peace with my death? In many ways, yes: I believed I deserved it, for having ruined the lives of so many I loved.

Conversely, my loves lived on. My son would be alone without me, and the world continued its inexorable march toward an unknown destination: The end of times? The final solar showdown? Stardust?

  Whatever it was, I would no longer be part of the journey.

  Some of the dying feel peace, they say. Others feel terror or rage, depending on their manner of death.

  My own emotions were more scattered. The effort of holding onto thoughts and existential views was too much under the weight of the analgesic and the greatest feeling of all: grief.

  I’d had one chance at life and I’d ruined it so efficiently that I had not even reached my thirties yet.

  I felt older. The weight of disease on my body and mind had made weeks seem to consume years, and yet the best moments passed in a blink, and here I lay.

  I had been asleep when I first felt the change come over me. I glowed: There was no other descriptor. My skin gave of an evanescent silvery light, like mist in the moonlight. 

  I blinked and it was gone.

  This, then, was the beginning of the end. Or perhaps…perhaps that hallucination was the worst of it. My chest was lighter, my breathing less ragged. I angled my face toward Viggo, my love and the man whose life I had destroyed through my own selfish hungers.

  How he should have come to love me still was beyond my understanding. Any lesser man would have never forgiven me.

  His eyes, bottomless and dreamy as ever, brightened when I moved to face him. He’d been crying. Whatever the nurses and doctors shared must have been bad.

  What a relief that I could tell him my lungs seemed to have improved during my rest, my heart slowed to a less fevered race toward the final finish line. I squeezed his hand, a reassurance.

  He hugged me. He smelled like he hadn’t showered in a day or three. His hooded sweatshirt carried the scent that was wholly and only Viggo’s into my nostrils, into my healing lungs, into my heart.

  I breathed deeply.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked as I lay back against the angled bed. “What can I get for you?”

  I ran my fingers over his stubble, thrilling in the texture and familiarity of it. In spite of my physical improvements, I coughed. “This seems to be getting better,” I told him.

  He clutched my hand in both of his and held my fingers against his cheek. I could stay like that forever, if he would allow it.

  “We thought we’d lost you,” he said, a small break in his voice as he edged the words out. “I’m so glad you feel better.”

  I smiled at his love and his intentions. He wouldn’t lose me today, I could feel it. I stroked his hair away from his temples and frowned at the deep areas of gray beneath his eyes. “Viggo, you need to sleep.”

  “I have plenty of time to sleep later,” he insisted.

  We argued briefly with our eyes, but Viggo won. He had far more experience with parenting, with coaxing his wife into reasonableness, that defeating me was almost a nonevent for him.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked.

  Something moved near the foot of the bed. I forced myself not to look at whatever shadowed thing it could be. The bleakness of the idea that I might be losing my mental faculties was too much to bear. I could not place that further burden on Viggo — or anyone else.

  “Not yet,” I told him. My stomach, like the rest of me, felt only happiness at these improvements. I might take some broth, but first… “I want to look at you.” I held onto his hand and felt tears sting my own eyes, some of thousands I had shed since learning that loving me had cost him his life. “I would do this a thousand times if it meant you could live.”

  He squeezed my fingers tightly. “It wouldn’t be living without you.”

  “It has to be.” Even if I improved now, today, the writing was on the wall: I was far more sick, far more weak, than he.

  As if to emphasize this fact, my body chose that moment to constrict in a violent fit of coughing that served only to remind me how relieved I would be when the end finally came. I lay back against the bed, reveling in the feel of his fingertips as they grazed my forehead, swept my hair away from my eyes. It was so much better than the agony in my lungs and head from coughing.

  “Do you want to see Eddie?” he offered.

  There was nothing more valuable than a chance to hug my son and tell him I was improving and would be home soon. “Yes,” I said. “Bring him in, please.”

  My voice came out healthy and clear, with none of the effort, none of the wheezing, of the past few days.

  Freedom, sweet peace from the pneumonia. I said a silent thanks to whoever had discovered antibiotics.

  “Edvard,” Viggo said, his voice taut. 

  I looked at him, waiting. 

  He stood, his voice louder, more distraught. “Edvard,” he pushed.

  It was then, when I saw the terror in his eyes, that my mind registered the loud whining behind my head. I looked up, into the blaring green and black screen, which declared that my heart had stopped beating.

  I touched my chest. How was that possible? I was fine. I was better than fine — I didn’t even gurgle when I breathed!

  “Viggo, I’m okay,” I promised. I tugged at my hospital gown to loosen it, to see which of the leads had come loose.

  I wasn’t wearing a hospital gown: I wore my favorite blue cashmere sweater and a red and white checkered dickey. This outfit…

  When had I changed my clothes? My mind really was falling into the permanent decay that accompanied this illness.

  Viggo collapsed against me and sobbed into my chest. I ran my fingers over his back, over his hair.

  “Shhh,” I murmured. I wasn’t well, but I resolved to be as whole for him as I could manage, for as long as possible.

  When he leaned back in the little square chair he’d occupied for days, I reached for his hand again.

  Mine slid through his.

  I tried a second time with the same results. It seemed I was more essence than matter.

  In fact, when I stood and stepped away from the bed I was able to take in the scene and understand it for what it was: I stood in the corner near the window. I also lay lifeless in the bed, home to Viggo’s grip and desperate sense of loss.

  Dead: I was dead. 

  Interesting, that there would be a pain-free afterlife. I wasn’t sure I deserved such relief from suffering after the grief I had rendered in my brief life. 

  I could follow Viggo home, reside at Falkhus, watch Eddie and Viggo’s three children grow. I could feel at home, at peace, forever a silent observer.

  Yes. This was what I would do with whatever remained of my existence.

  “Viggo!” I yelled as loudly as I could, but he could not hear me. He was unreachable from where I stood.

  His son, his youngest, also called Viggo (VJ, for Viggo Junior, the anglicized version born of too much television and not enough Danish pride), raced into the room with a paper airplane in his hand.

  “Viggo,” Viggo rasped to his son. “Stay out.”

  “I made a plane,” VJ said. He was young, still in the midst of single digits, oblivious to Viggo’s pain. “Like Niels’ and Eddie’s.”

  He tossed it into the air and it flew a true path toward me. Was it possible…could he see me?

  I reached out, half instinct and half impulse, and caught the plane. I caught it! Holding it, I passed it to VJ.

  “Onkel is better!” VJ told Viggo, nothing but enthusiasm and excitement and the pure innocence of childhood. 

  Viggo hugged VJ to his chest, both arms around him. “No, my søn. He has died.”

  “Viggo?” I asked with care: I asked the son, not the father, since it was evident that the elder Poulsen was unable to see me.

  VJ did nothing to acknowledge me, though he did squeak out, “No, he’s all better.”

  This only made Viggo cry. “VJ,” he pleaded.

  “Far!” VJ yelled, and threw the plane from where he sat in Viggo’s arms.

  I caught it a second time and passed it to VJ. Even if he could not see me, we had this one small interaction that he might remember. It would be something mystical, something to give him hope even when Viggo died, that there was life beyond.

  I leaned in close to them and invited myself into their embrace. If I could have cried, I would have done so then, but tears would not come.

  VJ’s eyes widened. He saw me! He tried to touch me, but his hand fell through my body. He looked at Viggo. “Is Edvard…”

  “Yes,” Viggo said, his voice laden with sorrow. “He’s gone to the heavens,” he said in a lighter tone, “to be better.”

  “What if he didn’t go?” VJ argued. “What if he got stuck?”

  What a brave and beautiful soul VJ had for trying to convince his father. I ruffled his hair, delighting in the goodness of his heart.

  Behind him, something moved. It caught the corner of my attention and tugged at me: Come.

  Not yet, I thought. If there was any chance at all of Viggo knowing I continued, I had to give him that: Hope that he would not cease on dying.

  “Don’t listen to silly stories,” Viggo admonished VJ. “He is gone; he will be free now.”

  “But—” VJ held the airplane.

  Viggo’s voice cut the air, harsh and insistent. “VJ.”

  “You’re wrong!” VJ cried out, and he ran from the room into the well-lit hall. The plane coasted to the floor in his wake, but I made no move to catch it this time. If I went into the hall…would I see Viggo again?

  I had no idea, but I knew VJ needed comforting words now. I retrieved the paper plane and found VJ hunched against the wall as tears poured down his face.

  “VJ,” I said, as tenderly as I would speak to my own son.

  He looked at me, his eyes round with unexpected fear. “Am I dying?”

  How could he have derived that from whatever sweet magic this was? “No, VJ. You are healthy as can be,” I promised. I hugged him. It was not as tight a hug as I would have liked, but it was something, he still knew I was there.

  “Why can’t Far see you?” he asked.

  “People have always speculated that a child’s mind is more open to the world than an adult’s,” I told him, though in truth if there was any adult I thought might have been open to the possibility of seeing beyond, it was Viggo.

  VJ was still fixated on his own mortality, as he should be. “Did I catch the virus?”

  “No!” I promised, desperate for him to understand.

  Come, something beckoned from down the hall. If you stay, it will become permanent. Now is your chance to be waiting for your loved ones when they reach Death.

  I kneeled down beside VJ. “You are so good, so healthy.”

  VJ nodded, accepting. It did nothing to stave the flow of his tears, but he’d at least allowed himself to believe he was safe. “Are you leaving?”

  Could VJ hear the same voice, feel that inexorable tug toward something other?

  I hoped not. The tug frightened me.

  He must have read my answer in my expression, because he nodded gravely. “Are you going where my sister went?”

  His sister, his unborn aborted sister whose pregnancy Giana had terminated rather than inflict this suffering on a newborn child.

  His sister: She could be a purpose for me, a role to fill in my new existence, if I could find her. “I’ll take care of her,” I promised.

  At the end of the hall, a light appeared.

  I’d read and heard about this enough times to know what it was supposed to mean: This was the afterlife, calling to me.

  What if I still wanted the current life?

  If I remained here and it became permanent, I would never see Viggo again after he died.

  I would never see Eddie, in the far distant future when his life came to an end.

  Alright, I agreed. I would go, accept whatever fate awaited me beyond that light.

  Viggo came out into the hall and tugged VJ into a deep and emotional embrace. “I’m sorry I was angry.”

  “Hug him,” I urged VJ. “You’ll both need a lot of hugs.”

  As for me, wherever I was headed…would there be hugs? Forgiveness? Absolution?

  If not, I would take what measure of peace I could claim from my last moments on earth. I hugged Viggo, whether he could feel me there or not.

  “Far,” VJ said in his small child’s voice, “Edvard is going to be with my sister.”

  Viggo leaned back and studied VJ’s face. “What happened to Cille?”

  “No, not her, my baby sister!”

“Tell him her name is Gia,” I said.

  “My sister Gia,” VJ said. 

Tears flowed from Viggo’s eyes again, tears of love and of closeness more than tears of grief. “He will protect her, where they are,” he assured his son.

  It was no wonder VJ was brave, with a father like that to lead him. I felt my lips curl upward in an affectionate smile.

  Come, the voice urged again. This is the last chance. Five…four…

  Was I a child now, to be summoned by countdown?

  Quickly I hugged them both one last time. Three…

  “I love you, Far,” VJ said, his eyes locked on mine. Two…

  Viggo stood, and in so doing completely encased himself in my ethereal form.

  “I love you too,” both of us said to VJ, together. One…

  There was pride, there was love…

  Zero.

  …there was light.