David Policar 1995
I should have known she was going to be difficult from the first day she died.
At first, I didn't even realize she was dead -- she was standing by the curb with the rest of the crowd, cursing at what had once been a white Ford stationwagon (but had since become a crumpled, twisted mass of white metal wrapped around a telephone pole), shouting for someone to call the police, call an ambulance, etc. Meanwhile, the driver was leaning against his steering wheel, staring glassily through the holes in his shattered windshield at the wrecked front end of his car. Naturally, I assumed he was the one I'd been called to. It was an honest mistake.
Of course, when he unstrapped his seat belt and opened the door, it was obvious I'd made the wrong call. That's when I noticed the body underneath the front tires. It didn't take long to recognize it as the lady on the curb... you develop a feel for that sort of thing in my line of work. By that time, though, she was gone -- which is in itself not typical of the recently deceased.
Now, I've seen a lot of folks die since I got my calling. Usually they just stand around, dazed, watching their bodies get carted away. Sometimes they drift into their own fantasy worlds. Sometimes they fade out at the edges. They don't generally curse and shout, and they certainly don't walk away on their own. There was something unusual about this woman.
It only took me a few minutes to find her, though I nearly missed her a second time, she was that animated. She was rushing back towards the scene, looking around frantically as if she'd lost something. She was peering into a side alley when I stepped out into her path. I gave her my best guardian-angel smile and asked if she needed help.
"I've lost my pocketbook," she said, rushing all the words together. "Have you seen a large black fake-leather pocketbook? I must have dropped it." She was already starting to move past me. I had a sudden image of this poor woman trying to open the door to a car she wouldn't be able to drive, balked by a missing set of keys she wouldn't be able to carry, desparately trying to get to some destination she wouldn't be able to reach. It was infuriating... I had to find those keys and get going before they ran without me, and I had no idea how I could have misplaced them!
I was actually searching through my pockets before I snapped out of it. Amazing! Thinking someone else's thoughts is a novice's mistake, and we weren't even on similar wavelengths -- she'd drowned me out by sheer intensity. Clearly, I needed to take this woman more seriously, before she had every driver and pedestrian on the Fenway searching for a pocketbook that, by this time, was probably in an ambulance on its way to Mass General.
I stepped up my own volume and stopped her cold, then turned it back down and placed my hands gently against her shoulders. "You've lost more than your pocketbook, actually." I smiled, as harmlessly as I could. "But that's OK. You don't need a car to reach your destination."
The first contact is always tricky. Mostly, the ones in denial haven't noticed the lack of sensation, but they always notice it when I touch them. I remember Michael touching me when I died... like being in a room so silent I'd stopped noticing the silence, and then someone spoke to me. I normally prefer to wait until they've gotten their bearings before springing first contact on them, but she was an unusual case.
She was stubborn, but not stupid... it didn't take her long to make the connection. It rarely does, once you get them thinking. Still, something about her gave me the feeling she was going to want it spelled out for her before she'd let go. So I gave her the standard spiel, Death and the Afterlife and Judgement and all that, just like it'd been given to me, as calmly and quietly as I could and letting it all sink in. A few pedestrians hurried past, and I wished -- not for the first time -- that I'd had the presence of mind to steer this conversation somewhere a little less public. On the other hand, people always did think I was a little odd, even before.
"So... you're saying I'm dead?" Her voice was calm, slow, and edged with a forced skepticism. I nodded. "And I'm supposed to be judged for my sins. Then what? Heaven or Hell, is that the way it works?"
"No, not exactly." The crowd around the coner had dispersed, but there were still plenty of pedestrians, so I'd stopped talking out loud. She seemed to understand me fine, though, which was a good sign. Sometimes their spirits are so faded there's more static than signal. Still, I wasn't sure what to tell her... everyone has their own idea of what death ought to be like. So I opened myself up and let the story tell itself. Sometimes that works.
"Most people have the wrong idea of what life's all about, you see, so naturally they don't understand death," I heard myself explain. "We think of life as a journey... as a hallway with birth at one end and death at the other. So naturally we wonder what's behind Door #2, right? We conjure up all kinds of things... Heaven and Hell and Purgatory, Limbo, Valhalla, you name it. Guardians at the Threshold, waiting to pass judgement on us for our sins or reward us for our virtues. Oblivion, as if we were nothing but circuits and meat. Or reincarnation, with one hallway opening out into another, eternally. All kinds of stuff. "
"But you know different?" Again, her voice held skepticism and a kind of challenge, but her heart wasn't really in it. She was a reporter, I guessed, or maybe a lawyer.
"Well, I don't have all the answers, if that's what you mean, but I know it's the wrong question.
"Life isn't a hallway. It's more like being a character in a movie -- or better yet, like watching a movie and identifying with a particular character. Have you ever done that?" She nodded.
"Well, what happens to that character after the movie is over? She's not dead, because she was never alive, right? But you don't see her any more... she's gone. Except she isn't, really... you can watch the movie again, if you want to relive the experience. You can tell your friends about her. You can make up your own stories about her, or other people can create sequels and books and television episodes about her for you to read and watch. She can inspire other characters you create, in stories or daydreams. If you're really into the character, you can adopt her mannerisms and speech patterns, or dress like her, or name your children after her, or whatever. It all depends on how strongly you identify with her, how important she is to you.
"To put that into Capital Letters... maybe she fades into Oblivion, and maybe she takes another turn on the Wheel of Life, and maybe she winds up somewhere else altogether... Heaven, if you like, or Hell, or wherever it is you think about her being. It all depends on where you choose to put her. Maybe none. Maybe all at once. Maybe something else altogether. It all depends on your state of mind."
It was a pretty good speech, as far as that went, but it is close to a waste of time transmitting this stuff in words. Still, nobody else had gotten that much of a speech through me in all my time on the job, and I made a mental note to thank myself properly later.
"So I'm a figment of someone's imagination? I'm not really Diana Dawson, I'm not really a reporter for the Boston Globe, I'm just a character in a movie? Sorry, I don't buy it."
Whoops. This woman was bound and determined to be skeptical. It was more than a defense mechanism; it seemed to be her way of getting information out of people. Well, I was more than willing to oblige.
"Again, not exactly. What I'm saying is, the person you think you are is a creation of your own imagination. Diana Dawson is a person you liked enough to be, for a lifetime at least. Now, the lights are coming back on in the theatre, and you need to make a decision -- what happens to this person you've been? Where do you choose to put her?"
That seemed to penetrate. She stared at me through a long silence. Followed, predictably enough, by more questions.
"So, where do you fit into the picture? How come you're the only one who can see me? Who are you, anyway -- the angel of death or something?"
I had to laugh, which upset her. But what an image! I'd never thought of myself as a Reaper before. So I projected it as a thought-form... ten feet high, draped in black velvet robes with bony claws wielding a massive blade, a skull's head with shoulder-length dirty blond hair wrapped in a red bandanna, a week's stubble, and a goofy grin on its face. She gasped. I replaced it with a Normal Rockwell angel -- glowing white robes, wings, and a halo over the same stubble, bandanna, and goofy grin. She cracked up. I may not be the most imposing shaman to ever be initiated, but I know how to get a laugh... and sometimes, that's more useful.
"Nah,the angels are reserved for the better parts of town. " The spirit, it seemed, had left me; I was on my own. I shrugged my shoulders. "I'm just your ordinary, garden-variety shaman."
"A shaman?" she echoed. She was obviously confused by it all.
Silently, I welcomed her to the club. I'd been confused by it all for years.