I Wake Facing the Ocean

I wake facing the ocean.

My name is William. Or at least it once was.

I was born to kind parents.

I fell in love and married my wife. We had two children. They gave my life weight and direction.

At 44, I fell ill, and three months later I died.

In my final days I grew weak. My body no longer did what I asked of it.

I grieved for what I was to miss but I was not afraid.

Near the end, I returned to my faith. It asked little of me. I held it quietly.

My breathing slowed. Then it stopped.

There was darkness, and then a sudden intensity that is hard to explain. It was as if everything I had ever been came over me all at once, without shape or order.

Then I woke facing the ocean.

The island resembles one in the middle of the Pacific, but it does not behave like it.

The sky is the same blue I remember, but it stretches farther than it should. There are no clouds that gather or break apart. The sun is larger than it ought to be, closer and heavier in the sky.

The weather does not change. It is warm during the day and cooler at night. There are no seasons.

The ocean lies in front of me. The water is clear enough to see down for a distance, but the bottom never appears. The waves reach the shore in uniform intervals, each one following the last without variation, arriving and receding as if timed.

There are no animals. No birds, no insects, no fish in the water. There is no decay. I find no remains, no fossils.

Vegetation covers the island, but it does not change.

Three kinds of fruit grow here. One is sweet. One is sour. One is plain. I can eat them. I can taste them. I am never hungry.

At times I hear sounds that do not belong to anything I can see. They do not approach or fade. They do not resolve into a source.

There is nothing here to cherish. There is nothing here to fear. Nothing suggests that this place will change.

I examine myself.

I am much stronger than I was when I died. My skin shows no scars. There are no blemishes or marks I do not remember having.

My strength does not change. I can do fifty-three pushups. I can pull myself up eleven times on a low tree branch. I have tried to exceed those numbers. I cannot.

At night, sleep arrives on its own. I do not struggle for it.

Each morning, I wake in the same place, facing the ocean.

I tried to keep track of time at first. I counted days, then months, then years. I stopped somewhere around fifty. After that, the numbers no longer held. It may be eighty years now. It may be more. I cannot be certain, and I no longer try to be.

I have not aged. Nothing marks the passing of one year from the next.

At first, I believed there was an explanation I had not reached yet. I thought I might be hallucinating, that the morphine had lingered or the cancer had reached my brain. I considered that I had been taken, misled, placed somewhere without my knowing. I moved through every scenario I could assemble. None of them held. In time, I stopped searching for a cause. I am here. That is the only part that remains consistent.

I prayed. I spoke out loud. I raised my voice. Nothing responded. There was no sense of being heard or ignored. The place did not react either way.

I walked inland through the forest. It continued without thinning or opening. I did not reach an edge. I swam toward the horizon and then down as far as I could. The water allowed me to move, but it did not take me elsewhere.

At the end of each night, sleep followed. Each day, I woke again where I had begun.

Nothing about me feels newly gifted. I do not feel wiser or stronger in any way that matters. I do not feel closer to anything beyond this place.

There are only two differences I have noticed over time.

My memory is complete. I can recall my life from the beginning to the end without gaps. I can move through it in order or return to any moment I choose. I can slow time within a memory. I can replay a conversation word for word. I can watch myself from a distance, as if I were present but not participating.

My dreams are clearer and more vivid than they were when I lived. I dream of places I never saw and lives I did not lead. I dream of choices made differently and futures that never arrived. At times I dream of what feels like heaven. At times I dream of what feels like hell. Neither lasts. Neither claims me.

What has not lessened is the wanting. The absence of others does not dull with time. It sharpens. The island does not take anything from me, but it gives me nothing to hold in its place.

At some point each day, I review the steps I took and the choices I made.

I return to what I did wrong and what I did well. I move through them without order. I loved others. I worked. I gave what I could. I was kind more often than not. I was present for my children. I was there for my wife. I did not lie when it mattered. I did not cheat. I was not cruel.

I was not a saint.

I repent what I can name and give thanks for what I was given. I do this quietly. I do not know if anyone hears it.

I do not know if I was judged, or what judgment looks like, or when it occurs, or if it is finished. I find no lesson at the end of this accounting, and no indictment. Nothing tips. Nothing resolves.

When I finish, the day continues as it did before.

I have stopped seeking answers.

I no longer wonder where I will go next. I no longer wait for the island to explain itself. The questions still occur to me at times, but they no longer insist. I let them pass.

At night, I return to a single moment.

I am sitting in a rocking chair in the dark. My daughter is new and small against my chest, warm and heavy with sleep. Her breathing is uneven at first, then steadies. I rock without thinking. The room is quiet.

My son comes in from the hallway. He is still very young. He climbs onto me without speaking, fitting himself where there is space. He leans in and settles. I feel the weight of them both. I feel their heartbeats, separate and close, through the fabric of my shirt.

Nothing needs to happen next.

I let the moment remain exactly as it was.

Sleep comes.

I wake facing the ocean.