Memories of the past ebb and flow around me like a fast-running stream. Here and there, I pick out snatches of melody, laughter or tears, heartache or guilt. Occasionally, small groups clump together in eddies, circling round, threatening to drag me into the whirlpool of emotion of a particular moment; a birth, a death, singing with joy until my voice is hoarse. I linger at each of these, but the need for closure presses me onward.
This is my personal Hall of Ancestors and, as I walk its length, portraits on the wall show each reincarnation; the twenty-first century social media star, the patent office clerk, the eighteenth-century Swiss craftsman. Here, a rural Italian mother garnishes a steaming pasta dish, and there a mediaeval herbalist offers a concoction of their own devising that claims to be a panacea for any illness from a sore throat to parasitic infections.
Tick.
A grandfather clock stands in the passage. I have done this many times before, and the method of marking my last seconds changes, but there is always an air of finality. I remember the sun shedding its last rays of orange and burnished gold over a forest, the individual grains of sand in an upended glass timer. The slow beep of a heart monitor in a hospital. The trapdoor opening beneath the hangman’s noose. Each instance is like wading through molasses, slow, cloying. Necessary.
Tick.
I do not have long here; I must order my thoughts and recollections before they fade to nothing. I cannot remember what has led me to this place this time, but it does not matter. I wish this iteration to be cast as a happy one; not as full of achievements as the others perhaps, but still fulfilling in its own way. I carefully set down beach holidays as a youngster, the birth of my children, and the relaxation into my dotage.
Tick.
That leads to unwelcome thoughts. The slow stripping of my cognitive functions by a disease I cannot name, even though I have been repeatedly told it. The fear that I don’t know what has happened to those I love. The isolation. The gradual degradation. I scold myself; I must not dwell on these if I am to complete my task.
Tick.
It is done. I gaze up at the frame; it is neither stylised nor animated as some of the others are, merely quiet, reflective, and gently glowing. I am at the end of my journey, a doorway full of light ahead of me. I gather my courage, take a breath and step through. As one life ends, another will surely begin. I can already feel myself coughing up fluid from tiny lungs, and strong, soft hands reaching for me, to welcome this new life into the world.
Tick
Something’s wrong. I cannot breathe. I gasp for air as the clock sounds, one last time.
Tock.
