The book says that when you lay dying you will begin to lose contact with what's around you.
He lays in the field and feels the blades of grass on his fingertips. He dances his hands across the grass away and towards his body. A snow angel without the snow. The grass tickles and scratches at his ears and neck. He dreams of a face he's seen many times. It's not so much the why he's laying in this field, it's the how.
How you're dying doesn't matter. It could be cancer. Possibly, septic shock from a knfe or gunshot wound. Maybe even the result of massive internal injuries because you were hit by a bus. It doesn't matter why you're dying.
From his perspective, with no points of reference in the sky, it almost looks like the sun is travelling past motionless clouds. He picks out shapes. Shapes of animals, countries on a map, even the face of his 5th grade music teacher. Each time the sun is clear his eyes squint a little. They adjust just in time for another cloud to pass by and darken his view that much more. Each time the sun shines directly into his eyes he fights a little harder to keep them from squinting. Keep them focused.
It doesn't matter how hard you try to hold on. Your focus will slip. Edges will blur. Voices will travel to you like soundwaves in water. You begin to feel distant from everything around you. The face of your loved one, the sound of your television, the feel of the blanket on your skin, the taste of your last glass of wine. All of these things will fade. There is nothing you can do.
Fewer and fewer clouds travel across the sky. The wind teases the grass against his arms and legs. He feels it push urgently into his neck. He almost scratches at the irritation. Almost.
Despite our best efforts we will all lose our focus. It's inevitable. Trust me. We go to doctors, we eat healthy, we exercise, we drink one less can of soda a week. No matter what we do, we're simply delaying the inevitable. We all say it won't happen to us. - I'm too young. - I have 3 children. - My husband's on vacation. - I just got a promotion. - I haven't finished the newest season of TV shows. We all have our own dramas, our own excuses. Our own plea-bargains. But, in the end, none of this matters in the least. We are going to die.
The material of the mp3 player on his chest is cooling compared to the heat of the sun. He enjoys the way it feels to have the sweat glisten all over his body. It allows him to still feel the wind as it passes over and around him. Like the sigh of a lover on a hot night. The environment moves around him and he knows that he is in it, but not a part of it. He can't be. He is distant from it, and will always be.
So, it's not the why we die. It's really not the when. And it certainly isn't the where or the who (Most times there is no who. Even we don't matter when it finally happens). It most certainly is the how though. How we choose to let go of ourselves matters immensly. Will we lay there fighting to live and making asses of ourselves as others watch? Will we lay calmly in a bed and proudly claim that we are ready to die? Will we choose to go somewhere alone? These don't matter either. It's the how, those others pertain to the when and the why.
He hears the music on his headphones. It is loud enough for someone who is 3 feet away to be able to discern the familiar baselines and guitars of one of his favorite groups. He senses the rhythms in the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet. The touch of the grass and the breathing wind are in time to the rising and falling melodies playing in his ears. Little by little the music loses it's importance. Loses it's power. He feels fewer and fewer blades of grass.
As you die, the book says, you will lose focus with your environment. You will slip away. What the book doesn't tell you is that you will focus on something. You will hold on. You will still attach yourself to something. What that one thing is of course depends on where you are, when it's happening, who is with you and all of that other unimportant stuff. It's all going to run through your mind. But, soon, sooner than you think, these matters will also fall away until you are focused on one thing.
He no longer feels the grass on his legs, or the wind on his arms, or the heat on his torso. He even barely registers the glare of the sun into his unflinching naked eyes. His music has long ago faded to the point of white noise. He feels only one thing. One little thing.
While you're dying something will catch your attention. It could be a dust-ball, a color in your sweater, a bump in your mattress, and spice in your holiday stuffing. This one detail, this one object, this one experience will become your world. It will pull all of your focus. Nothing will matter to you, not even the fact that you're dying. This is how you know it's the real thing. You're not going to be on TV in a few weeks talking about a bright light. You're not going to wake up in a hospital and thank god that you can see your family one more time. This is it. The moment of truth.
At the back of his neck he still feels a blade of grass. It pushes against his soft flesh and cuts into him like a knife. He knows there is no cut, but the intensity of this one blade of grass almost makes him believe he will need a band-aid. Everything else is gone from his mind. His mp3 player has run out of batteries. There are rainclouds forming overhead. The wind is picking up and the temperature is dropping. All of these things are not noticed. If you saw him in the field the conviction with which he was laying there would almost make you wonder if you weren't imagining the incoming storm.
As you focus on that one thing a thought will fill your head. "Is that the last bite of stuffing I'll ever have?" "Is this material the last thing I'm ever going to feel?" At this moment you won't care about charitable donations, how many times you've masterbated, that candybar you stole when you were 11, or the fight you had with your sister. None of it will matter. All you'll care about is the beauty of the last moment. That last thing. The beauty of dust, the beauty of taste, the amazing quality of how material feels on naked flesh. At that one moment all you will think of is how it may have been mundane before, but now it's the most breathtaking thing in the world. And by then it will be too late. You'll pass by it so fast if you had a memory you would barely remember it. But of course at this point it's too late. You're already gone.
He lays in the field and feels the blade of grass on his neck. All he can think about is how amazing grass is. The way it looks right after it's cut. That ripped and shredded look. And how, if you go back 4-5 days later you cannot find any evidence of how it's been cut. The grass still grows. He thinks about the lines along a blade of grass. The different shades of green that dance across its flesh. He thinks about how it feels to curl your toes in a lawn that hasn't been cut in weeks. The spongy forgiving quality of a field is better than any mattress he's ever laid upon. His mind flashes the images of summers in the park. The way grass is smooth in one direction and almost sticky in the other, he can almost sense it between his fingers. Almost.
Then it starts raining.
