Into the Summerland

Henry felt himself waking up. Which was odd, as his last thought had been he was about to die.

He was ready to die. These weary weeks clinging to life had left him no more than a sordid medical curiosity for the staff and a daily obligation to his family.

Henry had always been a rotten patient. Truthfully, he wasn’t much better when he was well. But this final role to be played passively out, drifting between splintered memories of an earlier life and short bursts of present awareness had left him craving the end. If he could have got out of bed and switched the bloody machine off himself, he would have done.

He would also have happily punched the doctors and their students, swarming around him with their hand-held devices recording the event, their keen eyes observant of every deteriorating sign. Their conversation hushed not out of sympathy for the wretch they were verbally dissecting, but more to avoid sounding foolish with the wrong diagnosis. The same bland bookends from the doctor, “Sorry to bother you – would you mind...” and “We’ll leave you in peace now...”

The assorted members of his family. Why? They knew his will. He’d given them all a copy. Did they think by turning up he’d change their slice? Where had they been when he’d really needed them? His daughter and grandson got first prize. The others who shared his blood but very little of his life would get their nods and no more. Their observations of his slightest movement irritated him more than the itches he couldn’t scratch, the sun in his eyes he couldn’t turn from, the smell of his own body he longed to cleanse.

Every time they brought his grandson Thomas he wanted to scream for god’s sake take the boy away! Don’t let his abiding memory of Gramps be this shrivelled old useless, twitching figure. Thomas had owned a guinea pig. They’d found it together, paws curled skywards. Thomas knew what death was. Let him say goodbye, stay away and just tell him when the time comes.

And another thing. In order to have a “good death” Henry was to be entertained by a playlist and movie soundtrack. Every inert moment was to be filled with music or films that some well-meaning prick had assembled to send Henry from this world to the next. Presumably with suggestions from the family.

Full marks for the jazz collection, which he willingly melted his senses into. But which cretin decided he should be subjected to the entire Star Wars collection? In better days he’d endured this for the sake of his grandson, but Henry had a genuine fear his final moments would be punctuated by some overblown platitude from a saga he loathed with a passion. He hoped at the very least Thomas was distracted whilst keeping his unnecessary, ghoulish watch over Gramps.

The clock. Cheap and functional. Its second hand crawling relentlessly round and round, charting every fleeting moment Henry felt slipping away. Each day a slightly weaker dilution of life’s essence. Breathing. In and slowly out. The blood crawling around his veins, bringing headaches and cramps as his limbs ached for a younger man’s flow. The clattering cutlery as another wasted meal went cold beside him. Common sense eventually prevailed and the icy needle was applied to pump the last vestige of sustenance into him.

Blue to grey. Grey to white. The ceiling tiles. Counting...one, two, three...too much effort. Boring anyway. The hum of the machines. Seagull wings flapping outside the window. Distant grumbling of traffic in the surrounding roads. Feeling weightless and trapped.

At least Henry felt little pain. No stranger to drugs, he relished how those dangerous, criminal substances were now smoothing his path out of this life. He wanted no prayers. He wanted nobody observing that his seventy-three years represented “a good innings”. He hated that expression. Had it ever brought comfort to anyone? A standby line for the witless ones to fumble their lips around.

There is no heroism in the impotent fading from life. No dignity in being carried inch-by-inch along the final path to oblivion. Alternately high as a feeble kite or stewed in puny despair at his prolonged, pointless existence; for Henry it really couldn’t come quickly enough.

So it was on that day, when Henry sensed his awareness of day into night was failing him and his time was short. He felt the loosening of the last threads binding him to this world. It would not be long now. He tried to relax his mind into letting go of even that last tiny protesting voice the spirit will call up. His breath became shorter, shallower; he felt the veil of death at last brushing his cheek to draw him down.

But in the next moment, he felt himself rising. Like a hopelessly stranded diver lifting up to the surface again.

There was no effort on his part. The rolling sensation of darkness across his senses was slowly lifting and giving way to lighter tones. A flickering haze of purple, pink and lavender danced across Henry’s vision as the light became closer still. The drugs, surely? They’d given him a stronger cocktail to get through the night and they were really hitting the spot.

And yet, this felt different. It was not a hazy ride through the land of nod. Even the highly accelerated, cosmic land of speedy nod.

Henry stood, eyes open. Alert, keen, free from pain and looking ahead. Around him were the dark walls of a narrow tunnel. He felt himself moving, but didn’t know how. There was no sense of walking; he was just advancing towards an opening. The tunnel, whilst dark as the wilderness night, was teasingly sprinkled with that same purple, mauve, lilac to pink hue. He could not look down or around.

He finally passed through the opening and into a large cavern. And sitting in that cavern, to his great shock was what appeared to be a giant.

Or a dwarf. It looked like a dwarf, but the biggest dwarf Henry had ever seen. He could not move. Not through fear (although he felt a little of that). He felt as if he was being presented. As if he had arrived at this destination by design and it was up to others what happened next. In this uncertain state, he saw the figure was waking up.