Where we go when we die

To come back to where we go when we die. I have two thoughts. When I’m trying to sleep or very down and laid up in bed I often return to them. 

One is when we die from hurt. Whether it’s a bullet to the stomach or some sadness. I imagine myself stumbling on and on until I crumple in a heap, and my tears flow into the ground under me until I grow roots and dissolve and turn into a tree. Live out the rest of my lifespan as a big tall tree. Lots of leaves, no feelings. Just sunlight and the companionship of neighboring trees all rustling together in the wind. Then one day when the pain is all gone because so much time has passed, the tree dies and the person wakes up. But there’s no memory of who they were or what was wrong and who they loved. The person starts all over again and maybe even meets someone who knows them from the last life - but they can’t remember and it means nothing to them.

The other one is just dying. You can feel the urge coming on for a long time before hand and tell everyone it won’t be long. Then one day during breakfast or lunch with your family you just suddenly say it’s time, and then get up and walk out toward a body of water. Most people live next to a lake or a pond or the sea, and they follow behind you. When you stumble into the water you start to dissolve from the tips of your fingers and toes like a bath bomb, until, completely submerged, you fizzle away.  Someone who loves you follows you into the water crying and trying to hold on to you but there’s nothing to hold on to.

But the water contains everyone who’s ever dissolved into it. If you miss someone you can go for a swim and feel them holding you. If you talk to the water you hear it murmuring things back.

Most families have a lake where everyone goes and the water is friendly and kids can swim and play there on their own and nothing bad can happen to them. If your people are in the water, you see a shimmer on the surface in the night. Sometimes immigrants or orphans are surprised to find some body of water in some foreign place that recognizes them, and calls out to them when it’s dark.

A lot of people go into the sea so the sea is friendly to everyone. Water evaporates and comes back as rain so that’s friendly too. Even the shower or the coffee is friendly, in a nice stranger who smiles at you at the bus stop kind of way. 

So actually no one is really ever alone.