When I died

I died. It happened when I was 19 years old. A bullet hit me in the head. The doctors at the hospital could do nothing more for me. The brain had taken too much damage. The machines were turned off. So here I lie now. Dead. Motionless and without breath, without the body heat that usually made me so lively.

Everyone wonders how it could have happened, why I had to leave this world so soon. The search for an answer drives one or the other to madness. Others quickly find a reason, an answer to it all. They all live on until death catches up with them and they, like me, lie here lifeless.

So, I get off the train that takes me on, while everyone else continues to ride on it. They take their questions, thoughts, and feelings with them. I remain here, with my entire life. Everything I was and everything that makes me me is here with myself. Nothing whole. They have taken part of my luggage with them and continue to carry it around with them.

At some point, they too will get off, and someone will take their luggage too. A long chain of burden. The dead no longer carry this burden. So here I stand at the station at the end of my journey. The path I took was mine. We are all on the same train, but the route is different. When I look back, the sun is rising from the direction I came from.

This station is not a terminus. Nothing ends here and nothing begins. It is only a further step in between. Everything that comes now is unpredictable, uncertain. Tied up for the moment, I await the next train. Where will it take me now?