Knowing

Or, On Being Aware: Less Than 24 Weeks Left…

Some days its easy to forget. That’s when I’m rolling out of bed, responding to a conference call — scraping chin-skin and spitting water with in-between jabs at the Mute button. My morning repast on such days is a hastily-wrapped toast made of five-seed bread with almond butter on top — a true breakfast of champions. But a champion of what race, I wonder. The reminder comes stealthily, like maybe in the local coffee-shop line for my triple-shot cappuccino to go. The cute urban-guerilla barista barks out my order and asks me if I want a loyalty card — 20 coffees and I get one free. Boom! My mind is off on a tangent, calculating the odds of whether I’ll be around to claim the freebie, at this rate of coffee consumption, strictly restricted to two per week. My eyes glaze over, the thought of some kindly neighbor or cop breaking into my place three days after and finding a partly-stamped coffee loyalty card in my wallet is somehow heartbreaking, pathetic. I’m tearing up a bit and the barista is getting anxious, she has the look of “I really do wish you well generic nerd-boy, but the coffee’s awesome and please don’t freak out on my shift, ‘cause that’ll really fuck me up with this gig and my manager has already had it with me and my tats”. That’s cool, I understand. I smile, collect my new card and leave. The cappuccino is a tiny universe of energized coffee-bean bliss unfolding between my cupped hands.

A decade ago this would have been a different story. A decade and ten days ago, I would’ve been oblivious, just expanding my life history in unconstrained directions, like the coffee notes sweetly unfurling into milky foam in my recyclable cup. That’s when I’d received a phone call from my sister, she mentioned traveling to a small village in an underdeveloped part of the country — the sort of place where the pharmacy dispenses medical advice along with prescriptions, and electricity comes about twice a week; that was where the mayor (or sheriff?) had introduced her to a priest of a peculiar sect, a sect that had a presence in a monastery only in the hills around the village and nowhere else. A sect of priests (or monks) that claimed to be devoted to maintaining the documented history of all the people on the planet…a monumental task in itself — except that this history covered both past and future times. It could be accessed by interested folks, available of course for a small donation. Which is why the local government representative, anxious to make her village stand out with a visiting dignitary had offered this unique opportunity to her boss’s boss’s boss in a pre-visit briefing and of course my sister said yes in an instant. I’m interested in meeting this priest, and I want to ask him questions about my past and my future. A donation will not be a problem, how many priests are there to be fed — we can arrange for a community meal. A week later, she was in deep dialogue and a couple days after that, she was on the phone with me. I still remember the day, it was early in the morning. A Saturday morning, and I was in my cycling shorts ready to head out the door when my phone buzzed in my back-pocket.

Simply put, she was convinced about the priest, the sect and the predictions for her life. He’d told her about the past, a hundred percent accurate and had offered up the future too. Part of which pertained to her dear brother, yours truly. According to the predictions made for her life, she had a fifty percent probability of losing her elder sibling in ten years time. Losing as in death. Being the solicitous little sister she felt it was essential to let me know. Give me the heads-up, as it were. Hey there, all well? Heading out cycling, that’s great I wish I had the time to do that sort of thing more regularly. Mum and Dad are doing well. We need to plan this year’s family vacation get-together to include my boyfriend. Are you dating anyone seriously yet? Oh good. How’s the job scene? Excellent, excellent. Oh and by the way, I met a priest and he predicted some interesting bits of my future, which happens to include your death in about three thousand six hundred and fifty days, not counting a couple of extra days due to leap years. I’d laughed out loud at this, waiting for the punchline. But that was it. Nothing more. Except for one other interesting bit of perspective —she said the priest’s predictions were probabilistic, and could be altered by doing certain things differently. But to know what things, I would need to go for my own consultation. Is that what it would be, a consultation? Or a reading? Something like that. Of course I’d never done it, I never went to the village. Screw the priest, the sect, the village and all. A rubbish story if there ever was one. I’d all but forgotten about it, and gotten on with the usual stuff a twenty-six year-old person does…and now here I am, almost ten years to the day…and it feels like time is running out for me.

Its almost worked out that way, see — it feels like there’s a plan that’s playing out with this at the end of it, no loose ends. Significant other, family, friends, work and me. My girlfriend of over two years, also the best relationship in my life ended about seven months ago. She died horribly, with lots of pain and suffering, of a bizarre set of complications resulting from a childhood infection that was never discovered, excerbated by the insanities of a profit-centric healthcare system. I never really got serious with anyone else after that, though I’ve been dating on and off. Siblings and parents, settled and busy with their lives. I see the parents once a year, ever since I moved to this little town in California — its something that I’ve tried to do, a sort of year-ending ritual. They like it too. And I’ve reached an inflexion point in my work life, a place where I can neither go forward nor back, and any sort of vertical moves (up or down) are restricted as well. Steady state as someone called it, a great place to be till you retire or die. Two of my closest friends have died within the last twenty four months. One was in a random plane crash that you’d recognize if I mentioned the airline. The other one walked into her house in the middle of a hot weekday, startling the crackheads that had broken in searching for the usual stuff — small valuables and personal electronics including laptops and smartphones— things that would sell within minutes on Craigslist. She was the nicest person I knew and doubly unlucky too, because one of the junkies had a trigger-happy finger that day and his uncle’s handgun in his pocket, that was itching to come out and play. And then there’s Paul, my best friend who’s gotten terribly busy with his kids — we still get together occasionally but its harder to find common ground these days between soccer coaching and math classes. His dog was also my best friend — it was kind of a package deal, but Chloe left for the Big Dog Park In The Sky last year — a sweet Boston terrier that devoted her ardent fast-beating heart to the boys till the end when she became completely blind and too weak to hop around anymore. He used to leave her with me for a few hours at a time if they got really busy, because Chloe and I got along just fine. She’d wander about my place exploring and chasing imaginary mice, looking here and there for little doggie-delights and then show up occasionally in my study, cocking her head to check in, and finally curling up next to me for a nap after a snack or two. Sometimes I still hear her snuffling and pattering about in the early hours of pre-dawn gray. The house I’ve lived in for the last five years holds memories easily, it was almost new when I bought it and its been a good place — it will make a good starter home for a family when I’m gone. And yes, I do drive a car that still gives me the giggles if I indulge on a backroad once in a while. Not many vices or excesses, so my health is middle-of-the-road fine. But that’s all. Its all mostly resolved, and there won’t be a big mess to clean up or anything when it happens.

Sometimes I’ve wondered while driving up the Great Highway by the ocean, what if I just pulled over by the side, and walked away into the green hills. Perhaps found a small town with a tiny studio, and some sort of work at a restaurant or a little school. Who would miss me, and how long would it take for people to figure out what I’d done, and most importantly —what would I miss the most? Its an interesting thought experiment, one that you should try out from time to time. It helps filter out the noise, the extraneous stuff that we continue to face in everyday life — things that make us focus on what we have rather than who we are and the sort of person we are becoming. Or something like that. Now that question is becoming more real, but in the context of impending death. Which sounds a bit dramatic — I should clarify that neither am I running around trying to avoid it, like a Final Destination movie character nor am I sitting quietly in a corner of a darkened room waiting for it to happen. That it is going to happen seems something that I seem to believe in more and more, regardless of all the cheerful absurdities I engage in, whether its sampling barbecue made by the nice man in the food stall at the car wash entrance, my pension fund contributions and filing taxes, or driving a little faster than is wise on the little windy road that goes into the hills. Its helped me make some vacation time happen without postponing things and also motivated me to take the trouble of writing a letter or two when dropping an email or posting on Facebook would have been the expected response. Which brings me to an unresolved aspect, what happens to Facebook and LinkedIn and other parts of my online presence after I’m gone? It was a bit upsetting at times to get reminders or alerts for L, a year or two after she died. So perhaps I’m going to close down my accounts soon, that seems best. Or maybe make a last post letting people know that I’m done here. Knowing can be helpful, you can work it into your plans and keep it mind when you’re buying Christmas cards. Knowing makes me happy most times, there’s a sort of comfort in the resolution of it all, though to be honest it also makes me a bit sad occasionally — because of the things I should have said and done with the people that mattered most of all, while we all still had the time.