Lodagus and the Afterlife
Confidence Spectrum: 80%
I
Lodagus reached the end of his life. Like every life story, his was filled with highs and lows. Stresses and accomplishments. But most of those things seemed insignificant now as his last page was being written. About a month ago, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and informed he had only a month to live.
Because Lodagus used to work in the hospital, he was all too familiar with what the transition from life to death looked like. It wasn't butterflies and rainbows. Hollywood and religious institutions don't have much in common, but they do share a peaceful, poetic depiction of death. Reality is much different. More often than not, a tube has been snaked down your throat and a machine controls your breathing. Laying still hurts. Moving hurts. Everything hurts. Somewhere along the way, urinary and fecal continence go on strike and you require scheduled cleanings from the nursing staff. Cognitive capacity dwindles to a state of constant confusion. People begin to silently ask themselves how much longer this should go on for. The whole process is demoralizing.
Eventually, something acute happens (or maybe you're lucky and jump straight to here). In these last moments of your life, you are surrounded by strangers in an ambulance or emergency room. Everyone is yelling out medical jargon and asking you questions like 'point where it hurts'. Even worse, the acute event might happen while you are completely alone. All the fear and panic described above, but in the context of silence.
You see, Lodagus realized that a person's last moments aren't spent whispering cliche pearls of wisdom to their offspring. They are spent struggling for oxygen. Famous last words are replaced with "arsggsdhasdh" Though, perhaps this is one of the best pearls of wisdom one could leave behind.
Knowing this and knowing he had end-stage terminal cancer, he decided to do something different. He planned his own death. It was to take place in the hospital. I.e. in a controlled setting. When the time came, a series of carefully timed medications would help him slowly drift off into the permanent, painless slumber that everyone imagines. His heart would stop beating without pain, fear, or worry. And this wasn't a normal doctor's appointment; this was a planned last hurrah. Invites were sent out so no one would miss the opportunity to say goodbye. Everyone was invited. People from across the country took off work to come. Like weddings, this was an excuse to take a break from the grind of life and bring friends and family together. It was a time for reminiscence, reflection, and camaraderie. It was a solution to the persistent (and ironic) problem that funerals always happen a few days too late from the point of view of the deceased.
The celebration was a success.
With only an hour until his time, he felt at peace. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt so present. Nothing else was on his mind except being here. When you see the finish line and its totality, irrelevant anxieties melt away. Turns out that most of his anxieties were irrelevant. They were downstream effects of running in the rat race.1
He looked around. There was music and mingling. He was surrounded by childhood friends, old college pals, cool coworkers, family, and more. All of them serving as little reminders of the various chapters in his life's story. He'd had the time to talk deeply and intimately with all of them. Why hadn't he done that before? Regardless, he felt that his story now had a conclusion.
With a minute left, everyone gathered around. Some sobbing. Some radiating empathy. It is a surreal countdown. The crowd gets quieter as the end approaches instead of louder. The anesthesia set in as the countdown reached zero, and Lodagus drifted into the afterlife carrying with him the calmness of a still pond.
II
As soon as his consciousness had faded into nothing, it hummed back to life. Only now, Lodagus found himself in the afterlife. Well, kind of. He was in a movie theatre of sorts. It felt like one of those 'snap-back-to-reality' moments you get at the end of a good movie. Only this movie had been going on for 78 years. He looked around. The room was empty. The movie credits were playing. On second glance though, Lodagus noticed they weren't actually credits. They were stats.
Life duration in minutes: 41,696,839
Volume of urine produced: 34,164 Liters
Steps taken: 152,029,800
Number of times swallowed: 17,082,000
Number of breathes taken: 570,320,731
Percent of life asleep: 35%
Years spent dreaming: 6.27
Years spent day dreaming: 5.288
Total distance traveled: 582.45 Earth radius's
Number of heartbeats: 3.23 billion
Word count (typed or written): 18,500,135
Time spent tying shoes: 6.50 hours
Total # of animals eaten: 3,734
Total food waste contribution: 24,470 pounds
Net world impact factor (0 - 10): 0.15
Time spent in shower: 1.72 years
Number of people met: 16,083
Number of Level 1 friendships: 775
Number of Level 2 friendships: 83
Number of Level 3 friendships: 7
Some of the stats on the screen were oddly specific and seemed a little familiar.
Number of times you acted like you weren't lost to prevent embarrassment: 945
Total time spent dipping Oreos in milk: 3.72 hours
Average number of encounters with someone until you remembered their name: 6.3
Average daily number of times phone was habitually checked for no reason: 9.23
% of time you snoozed your alarm: 78%
Time spent sitting in the car after pulling in the driveway: 3.86 days
Number of times googled 'Meaning of life': 28
Number of total solar eclipses witnessed: 1
Most listened to song: Days Chasing Days by Blame One
"Hold on." Lodagus thought to himself. "these are MY stats."
Lodagus noticed a control panel in front of him. He clicked the 'percentile' button and all the stats changed to percentiles. "Let's see here" Lodagus mumbled to himself. 91st percentile for dipping Oreos, 50th percentile for Level 3 friendships, and 30th percentile for urine produced.
Next, Lodagus clicked on the 'Highlights' button of the control panel.
Short clips from his life in chronological order began to play. Most years from age 16 and on featured at least a clip or two. Some had upwards of five to six. Clips were either personally significant to Lodagus or marked a fork in his life story. An event that sent his story down one of two very different paths.
As the last clip ended, the lights of the theater slowly began to shut off. Lodagus had a strange intuition of impending doom. That this was the end. The actual end. Someone walked in the room and began to take down the projector that was at the front of the room.
"Excuse me." Lodagus nervously said as the number of lights still on in the room began to get dangerously low.
"So this is it?"
No response.
"Is there anyway I can go back and do things differently?"
Without looking up, the stranger replied "You only live once, Lodagus. Was there really any reason to think otherwise?" Then the light above the stranger went out.
Now, there was only one light left in the theater. The one over Lodagus. Nothing was outside this column of light. It wasn't black. It wasn't a space that just lacked light. It was Nothing. Much like describing music to a person deaf of hearing, its impossible for a description to do justice here. None-the-less, Everything was in this small cylinder of light surrounding Lodagus, and Nothing was outside of it.
.
.
.
The light shut off, and Everything became Nothing.
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat. - Lily Tomlin