It’s a commonly-held belief that death is an end to all your worldly troubles. Or, depending on what you did in life it could be the beginning of a whole new, arguably worse, set of troubles.
Me? It didn’t leave me with any kind of peace, but it sure as hell left me with a whole lot of regrets, every single one acting like an anchor keeping me moored here. People are terrified of Hell, but as far as I’m concerned that pales in comparison to being stuck in a world you’re no longer part of with nothing but all your fuck-ups for company. That’s way worse than any lake of fire could ever hope to be.
Thinking about it, this is why a lot of ghosts wail.
All I did — all I could do — was watch the world go on without me. Not that anyone missed me all that much since I burned every bridge I had; family, friends, you name it. Pretty sure my eulogy was something like ‘We knew it’d end this way. Stupid son of a bitch pushed us away at every turn, so eventually we stopped trying. Nothing of value was lost.’
That’s definitely what I would have said about me.
Might have been days or weeks or even months after I kicked it, I don’t know, but the Reaper came calling in the form of a man dressed in a dark suit with a skull tie. Thought he looked like Johnny Cash. A far cry from the robed, scythe-toting skeleton we all think of, but hey. If Death wanted to look like the Man in Black that day, that was his choice.
“So, is this all you’re gonna do with your time? Hang around and feel sorry for yourself?” He tsked. “Pretty lousy way to spend eternity, if you ask me.”
One thing about me, I’ve always been a smartass. When ol’ Grimmy rolled up on me looking like he was going to break into an amazing Nine Inch Nails cover, I just sneered. “Didn’t hear anyone ask.”
“Charming. Plain as day to see why you’re still here,” Death deadpanned. “Lemme guess, you’ve got unfinished business. Heard it all before, kid. ‘I coulda done this’, ‘I shoulda done that’. As long as your kind’s walked the earth there’s always been someone who died full of regret.” He shook his head. “Best to leave it all behind. What’s done is done and there’s no changing it now.”
I knew that. If it were possible for me to go back and kick my own ass I would. Maybe having a skull-faced version of myself appear out of thin air to absolutely beat the brakes off of me would do me some good. But seeing as time-travel doesn’t exist for the living or the dead, that wasn’t gonna happen.
“You think I don’t know that? That it’d be easier to just go ‘Oops, I fucked up. Nothing to do about it now’ and just tra-la-la off into whatever the afterlife’s got in store for me?” I stopped for a moment. Dramatic effect and all that. Also I needed to rein myself a bit, because I doubt telling the Grim Reaper to shove it up his ass would go over big.
“…But it ain’t that easy for me. Maybe you don’t get it, seeing as you never had a life or attachments, but I can’t just walk away like nothing matters. So if it’s all the same to you, I’m just gonna stay here a while longer.”
Death stood there for a long moment, not saying anything. I’m sure he could have just forced me to cross over. Sent me to a part of the afterlife nastier than I deserve just for being a mouthy son of a bitch. Hell, for all I know he could have just erased me on the spot. If anyone can ‘kill’ a soul, I’m sure it’d be Death himself.
But he didn’t. He just shrugged. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you really can’t. But as long as you’re hanging around, you can make yourself useful.”
By that, he meant making amends. Not overtly. No appearing before anyone rattling chains and begging for forgiveness. Not even scrawling messages on the walls or fogged windows.
“Call it rehab, post-mortem community service, penitence, whatever floats your boat.” Death said. “You can even think of it as just saying sorry if you want.”
So that’s what I’ve been doing. Trying to make things better for everyone I left behind in little ways. Sometimes it’s mundane things, like putting Mom’s keys somewhere she can find them after she’s misplaced them for the five-hundredth time. Other times it’s weirder, like chasing off the unfriendly ghost attached to a vintage necklace my girlfriend bought.
They’ll never know it’s me. That’s fine, I don’t need them to.
Maybe one day, when I feel like I’ve done enough to make up for everything I failed to do in life, I’ll move on. Until then?
I’ll be right here.