I died the way every honest man hopes to.
Not in fear.
Not with machines screaming around him or strangers pressing on my chest.
Not in glory.
I was under a quilt my wife had made decades earlier, in a room that smelled like cedar, leather, and vix vapor rub old folks pretend fixes everything. Outside the window, the wind was moving over the pasture, and I could smell wet grass, dust, and cattle.
That's a good smell, in case you've never had the privilege.
It smells like work that mattered.
My family was in the house. I could hear them trying not to cry in the way people do when they know the end is in the room but don't want to be rude about it. One of my grandkids was sniffling in the kitchen. Someone shushed them. Floorboards creaked. A coffee cup got set down too hard.
I remember thinking, plain as day, that I'd had a fine life.
I'd raised cattle.
Raised kids.
Buried people I loved. Buried the Wife who created this life with me.
Watched the sun come up more times than I deserved.
Spent time with my grandchildren. Taught them, teased them, cared for them, dedicated my last years to them.
Hell I even had a newborn great grandson named after me.
Augustus Wilcox, a fine name. I managed to stick around long enough for him to say Pop-pop and for his sister to be on the way.
Id be leaving my family land, money, and cows. I set it up in a trust to keep the government honest and to provide for them. As long as they don't muck it up they could consider it generational wealth.
They would be fine, I'd spent a lifetime making sure of it.
I wasn't quite gone yet but, just like everyone told me, my life flashed before my eyes. All the good, all the bad. Towards the end the reel slowed down and stopped on a man with a goatee, bulbus nose, and a combover bowl cut. Why would it be that image you ask? Well...
In one of the stranger developments of my later years, I'd somehow gotten into anime because my oldest granddaughter decided I needed "better hobbies."
She was right, too. Every weekend me and the kids would sit back on the couch eat some steak and binge watch cartoons. My favorite was Naruto.
Far too much shouting in that show, but I respected the work ethic.
Especially that man in green that you only see for a few episodes. The one with the bowl cut and the eyes of a man who trained his whole life just for to protect what was precious to him. He went out fulfilling that purpose and died protecting his son. I'll admit that the dust in the room that day got into my eyes.
Might Duy was a sensible fellow with his priorities straight.
After the image stuck itself in my mind the reel sped back up and I reached the end. I could feel the breath leaving my body.
My daughter came in and took my hand, and my granddaughter put her head on my arm, and I knew I was about done.
"You can go if you need to, Grandpa," my granddaughter told me.
That near broke me.
So naturally, with my final bit of strength, I said, "Don't you go and sell the black heifer cheap."
If your last words can't be profound, they ought to at least be useful.
Then I died.
Which, frankly, should have been the end of things.
It wasn't.
The next thing I remember is darkness, warmth, pressure, and the violent certainty that something had gone very wrong with death.
Then there was light.
Cold air.
Noise.
And I was screaming.
Not because I was frightened, mind you.
Because I was a baby.
And let me tell you, there are few indignities greater than surviving nearly ninety years with your pride intact only to come back into existence unable to hold up your own head.
Then I heard a young man yell, at a volume no newborn should ever be exposed to:
"HE IS MAGNIFICENT! THIS IS YOUTH!"
And that was when I found out the universe wasn't quite done with me yet.