This is how so many people die.
It happens like this.
The cold.
Sometimes it comes suddenly and sometimes it comes creeping, slowly like some wolf that's been on your trail for a long time but you don't see it until it's too late. Sometimes you don't see it until it's the last thing that you see.
But you felt it coming quickly enough to build a fire and you are huddled next to it now.
Your life has fallen apart. Your marriage shattered or, perhaps worse, a sham. Your finances an indictment pointing their bone thin finger at you. Your health collapsed due to your poor choices. You feel utterly lost.
And, to stay warm, you have burned through every excuse you could find. At first the convenient justifications of that spare wood pile but that was gone soon enough.
Next it was your art. Then your furniture. Then the roof and walls. And then the floor.
And now it's just you, out of defences, sitting by the fire and you don't know who is dying faster, you or it.
This is how so many people die.
Exposed to the world from which they'd been sheltered for so long.
You look up at the sky and you can tell by the signs and portents that it will be warmer by morning. Relief. Thank God.
But you aren't sure you'll make it. You have nothing left to burn.
Of course, that's not true.
There's always that one thing left to burn and you are sitting on it now.
It is that old ponderous tome, old reliable in times of duress, that book of deep comfort, that book that the old timers call The Book of Supposed To.
This is how so many people die.
It is large. It is larger than the largest old dictionary in your grandparents house. It is bigger than any book you have ever seen.
It's cover is sturdy and well worn. Its binding is the finest you've ever seen - stitched in neatly folded batches so that she opens flat at any page. The parchment is thick and crisp and the corners dog worn and dog eared by not torn. The scripting in it, hand done by someone who was long and well dead before your time. It is the most precious thing you own.
This is how so many people die.
You've never never read it but you quote from it all the time. So did your parents. So did everyone you know. Like the Bible its words and phrases dominate popular Western culture but this book is even more so. You can find it in every culture. Some cultures have smaller versions but there it is.
To survive this night you must burn this book.
Darkness.
It is growing colder.
You stand up and go to push the book into the fire but... you stop yourself. Surely you could read quickly through the pages and keep the ones worth keeping? Perhaps you could still get through the night burning some of them. It would be a shame to let a work so antique and precious be lost so easily.
And so you open the cover and begin to read quickly, looking for some passage or phrase unworthy of remaining. Something untrue. Something worth burning. If you ration it out, you'll make it to daybreak and then you'll be okay.
But everything you read is the truest thing you've ever read.
"That son of a bitch should pay for what they did." True.
"My parents should apologize for what they did." True.
"I'm a sack of shit."
"I wasn't supposed to get cancer."
"I'll never amount to anything."
"You can't trust men."
"You can't trust women."
"I deserve to be punished for what I've done."
"I haven't gotten rewarded enough for all the good things I've done."
"Life is unfair."
"I should have ended up married that one not that other person."
"My marriage was supposed to last forever."
"I was supposed to be a better parent."
"War shouldn't exist."
"My partner wasn't supposed to die. We were supposed to grow old together."
All true.
You turn the pages faster now as night is upon you. The moon is shining down on you cold and merciless and only coals remain. Surely there must be something you can feed into this fire.
But it's all true. Every bit of it. No wonder everyone loves this book.
This is how so many people die. They refuse to burn that book of stories. None of them are true while all of them feel true. If you read your own book, you might feel the same way. It's all so familiar. It's all so comforting. You want it to be true even when you suspect it's not.
This is how so many people die.
They are found in the morning by those who, like them, lost so much, having burned through everything else first until they finally came to this, their precious stories - none of them new - all of them handed down from generation to generation. We tend not to read the book until we have to and, by the time we do, it's too late.
They are found like this in the morning, next to the fire, their arms clutched around this massive book, intact, no pages torn out. Their body frozen stiff. Their tears frozen to their face having died weeping for what they wished were so and having chosen this cold comfort over the chance at tomorrow.
This is how so many people die.
Wow, Tad. This is powerful. I love your writing. Thank you. 🙏
Thanks for the reminder❤️