When You're Dead

It was Friday the end of a long week teaching in a housing commission area populated by latch key kids with a distaste for anything that looks, feels or tastes like an institution of authority that is a ticket to nowhere for their socioeconomic class.

The Eagles “One of these Nights” were playing top volume inside the faded blue Ford Cortina rattling the speakers effectively drowning out the monkey brain chatter that Jessie had thumping at top volume inside her head. It was near sunset along the south Australian coast. The beaches were rocky and rough like the unpredictable Westernport Bay waters.

The song couldn’t even bring a belly smile to surface like it usually did with the memory of seeing these guys live in Brisbane whilst she had become a tropical cyclone June refugee during a solo snorkelling holiday last summer.

Silver linings?

Tonight there didn't seem to be silver linings except for the sunset glow on the clouds over the bay.

This was a route for popular surf destinations along here. The road was a narrow-twisted roadway that sometimes moved along the edge of the ocean cliffs. Otherwise it wound through land owned by graziers that had stock wandering on the roadside looking for feed outside their confined pastures.

The light was always tricky here late afternoon just before the winter sunset. Jessie was very familiar with this route. She drove it nearly seven days or nights a week either to work or to a party somewhere in Carlton one of Melbourne’s inner-city suburbs. Some nights she opted for the local pub where she committed to consume as much alcohol still drive home before losing consciousness.

She had pretty much devoted her life to wiping out. Deleting any memories from her childhood. Party girl hard core.

The pub was in a small fishing village about eight kilometres from where she shared a house with 5 other people, dogs, chooks, horses and a dairy cow. It was well before the 1980’s so drunk driving was not even considered a problem. It didn’t matter how blind you got. The traffic was sparce.

She was driving past the pub right now. It was already looking lively but uncharacteristically she didn’t stop. Perhaps it had to do with rousing suddenly to see the ocean below her out the driver’s window just a week ago. It must have been 2 am. She had no recollection of driving here and parking. The cars tyres were inches from the edge.

It didn’t really scare her. Just a robotic numbness until she woke in her bed the next morning. Hmmm. Maybe things needed to change.

Or perhaps it was because she’d been feeling strange the last few weeks. Not really in her body though she had restricted her intake of alcohol and stopped the 2 or 3 joints she had been having daily.

Ever since Jessie could remember she had dreamed dreams that eventually became true. She kept silent about this. She’d told her mother when she was very little. Then her mum’s regular comment became, “There’s something not quite right about you Jessica.” The mother child relationship was complicated as it was so Jessie just dropped the subject. To everyone, actually, just to be safe.

All relationships were complicated and had secrets. Jessie knew that. Right now she was immersed in the ocean emotional sensations she swam in daily whose unpredictable nature was not unlike Westernport Bay.

A squall could blow up out of nowhere leaving a sailor dangerously far from shore. She loved sailing on the bay mostly because it felt so familiar to how life played out. She was a sought-after crew member for the weekend bay yacht races because she would negotiate any situation with relentless focus and grit.

As Jessie drove with the setting sun on her left the road was veiled by tears streaming down her face. “I can’t do this anymore.” She pummelled the steering wheel with the fist of one hand while white knuckle gripping the wheel with the other.

“I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t!” her head dropped to her chest, and she lost sight of the road.

“I can’t be here anymore.”

Somewhere in her brain way in the background of the white noise of monkey chatter she heard Gospel voices singing. It reminded her of walking in Melbourne busy inner-city traffic and hearing a chorus from a church hidden inside the noise.

“I looked or’ Jordan n what did I see?

I saw a band of angels comin’ after me”

Within nano moments the hymn had swallowed all random noise. It was like walking to the church, opening the door and going inside. Even the Eagles were silenced. Stunned Jessie drew breath and raised her eyes to see what was there.

There: a ninety-degree bend in the road just a half akm before her own shared dwelling loomed. The Cortina was headed straight into a hedgerow of small coastal pines that grew there. They blazed with the sunset’s surreal white light. Jessie’s accelerator foot had somehow pushed itself to the floor. She was speeding recklessly fast; the distance between her car and the bend was shortening at an alarming rate.

How would she ever make the bend safely? Why not just hit the trees and be finished with this great experiment of her being created by her mother and father?

Jessie was 16 kneeling in her grandparent’s lounge room. It was a beautiful room. Small windows situated where the ceiling met the wall had small diamonds framed in lead that acted to create rainbows all along the floor with the late afternoon sun. It was happening. One of those weird out of body experiences she seemed to be so good at.

The memory of that moment was so real as Jessie experienced it. The silence of the big house. Being left alone to do her homework. It wasn’t that hard to step out of your body when stuff was going on you couldn’t control. She’d learned that too. Though now inside this memory replay she was totally associated feeling the desperate terrible ache that radiated from her bones.

She rattled the prescription bottle of her grandmother’s benzodiazepine. It was time to leave this circus. In that moment of cool clarity Jessie felt released. She looked heavenward asking a single word question “Why?”

Instantly she was four years old digging up the shallow grave of the Easter chicken who’d died in her care. The resurrection story was still fresh from Sunday school and she was checking to see if her chick had risen from the dead. The half-eaten carcass was teaming with maggots revealing a dirty feathered skeleton. Where was “forever and ever” in this scenario? Death was final. The end.

Relentlessly the timeline continued. She visioned nine-year-old Jessie kneeling beside the horse that was the best friend she shared every secret with. Blood seeped from the side of animal’s mouth while its eyes stared blankly. Only moment’s ago, Jessie had sawed through the rope around its neck with a pocketknife. It had taken an eternity.

How? How could this have happened? It was Jessie’s fault the animal had reared back and hung itself. “Anything. I’ll do anything You ask dear God. Save my horse! Please forgive me.” she sobbed over and over.

Instantly Jessie found herself in front of a Wall of Light. It extended endlessly in all directions and the Voice said. “You can keep dying Jessie or you can do what you are guided to do. Whatever I ask. Wake up. Or die. It’s not your time but it is your choice.’

The timeline spun back the way it had taken her.

Her horse took a deep inhale, shook itself and stood up to nuzzle her. How had she done this?

The tiny yellow feather skeleton made it clear death is our destiny when it is time to die.

Sun prism rainbows danced on her Grandmother’s carpet as she was filled with a sense love so deep so intense it blinded her, and she dropped the bottle of pills.

“Why? Because I love you.” the voice spoke to her whole being.

Jessie looked down at her body slumped over the wheel of her car. With a thud like being tackled from behind she landed in her body and looking up saw the row of pine trees in her headlights. Instinctively she swung the steering wheel sharply to take the turn. It felt like some sort of crazy carnival ride tumbling around in the vehicle listening to glass break, tyres scream on the bitumen. The car righted itself bouncing several times to the right and left. Jessie was sitting on the passenger side of the Cortina with the rear vision mirror in her lap.

Bits were falling from the car. One headlight was gone; the other was fixed skyward. Jessie shook glass from her hair and noted that she had been released from her seatbelt. That probably saved her. Like a paramedic reacting to a crash scene, she noted that the vehicle was obstructing the road on a blind curve at night.

“I have to move it. This is dangerous. Someone could get hurt.” She slid to diver’s seat and turned the ignition. It was dead. “Please Whoever You are start the car. It has to come off the road.”

She tried again and the engine turned over. Jessie drove to the side of the road and got out. Just then a car swerved around the corner and came to a grinding halt. Her partner leaned out the window and said “Jesus what happened?

Jess looked blankly at him. “I crashed.”

“I can see that. Ok. Well, I’m off to the pub. It’s Friday night. See ya.” And his car disappeared as quickly as it had come.

Things became very clear at that moment. “Thank you,” she whispered with her heart.

She locked the car and walked the rest of the way home. The verandah light shone across the cold evening. Jessie crawled into bed and felt the delicious coolness warm to her body. She fell into the deepest rest she had experienced for a very long time.