THE DAY IT ALL ENDS - by Nse Obot

If you knew when you'd take your last breath, how would you want your final hours be like and what would you like to have as your last meal here? As the saying goes, "save the best for last". Funny how all our favourites end here; our best of anythingbecomes nothing when death, as a messenger of fate,comes around. If again, you knew your last moment, perhaps before you lie on that well-made bed, you'd raise your glass in honour of the life you've lived as it comes rushing to you in waves of memories and sparkling colours of love. The flashbacks would take you on a tour to the moments too strong to be buried under the avalanche of time. You have lived now you must leave. Loved ones would gather round so your last minutes aren't spent alone; almost like the airport experience that impregnates the moment with a sad kind of happiness; pictures and more pictures, hugs loaded with feelings many try not to show. Your journey means you would be gone and your return hangs on the rope called hope. Your last day is reduced to minutes and the realisation weighs heavily on the mind. The faces of family, friends and well wishers are the perfect oxymorons; misty eyes and smiling lips. Touch lasts longer, grips become firmer. In every holding of the hands, there's a noticed tightness. Your life in its entirety collapses into one hundred and twenty seconds. Goodbyes have never been said with glee, yours isn't different. Behind you, the door is wide open, waiting for you to walk through. This you do with the unwillingness of a man so in love with living that death, though expected, still leaves a tinge of surprise in you. Now on the bed, your final vision is the ceiling, or maybe, what hangs above it; the heavens. Your body free from the hustle of life. Set to rest, in peace or pain. The stillness that death is known for descends on you, as your eyelids are about to close forever. Your eyes are finally shut and almost immediately, your heart stops. You're done, and now, you have gone. And just like that, you are past like the past tense forms; was, did, had. To die like this would have been awesome but death, most often than not, is big on surprises. This stunt it is able to pull because humans have somehow held on tightly to the belief that death would be patient enough for them to live until they're tired and bored of breath. 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙙𝙖𝙮 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙙𝙞𝙚; 𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙢𝙤𝙨𝙩 𝙞𝙢𝙥𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙖𝙣𝙩 𝙙𝙖𝙮𝙨.

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