A few nights ago, I died in my dream. I was in some sort of business meeting on a high floor of an office tower, standing around and making conversation. Midway through a sentence, I had this uneasy feeling inside of me, like the feeling you get just before throwing up.
Things began to shake violently; items clattered from the desks and the lights flickered out. It must be an earthquake, I figured, but for some reason I didn’t feel compelled to duck under a table and protect myself. Moments passed, and it didn’t let up. I suddenly felt the normal force under my feet give out as the world began to move outside the window. The building was collapsing.
It was strange to feel the gravity suddenly turn off, the room darkening as it began to face the ground rather than the sky. I hated the feeling of freefall. Faced with my imminent death, my brain, surprisingly cogent, understood what was about to happen. I was briefly scared, only for a hundredth of a second, and then it suddenly stopped. I felt abnormally calm as the queue of tasks in my head cleared out — seeing as I would not be able to attend to them.
Only a few seconds passed before I died. I thought about how I felt calmer than I expected to, as I figured that dying like this would involve panicking. I was not really bargaining, knowing it was a bit late for that. I thought about how this was the end — that all I was fighting for would be cut short by bad luck.
But then I thought about the rest of it. I thought about the things I liked to do — good food in good company, making people laugh, petting dogs and so on. I had spent some of my time on those things, and I spent a few hundred milliseconds thinking about that. A few moments in particular stood out to me, mainly moments of levity and of love. I remembered faces and eyes of people, mostly. If I had extra time, perhaps I would have spared a moment to regret not looking more.
Oh, but the regrets. I regretted most of all not being myself. Apologizing for who I was, or hiding it for the sake of some frivolous end, took up at least a few dozen of my remaining milliseconds. I regretted working so much, and I used just a moment more to ponder how often dying people think that. I did not think much of those awkward moments that kept me up at night, but I did think about the mistakes I made that affected others. I did not regret making them so much as I regret not making them right. What would it have even meant to make it right?
It seemed that I was now moments from hitting the earth, with a second or so left. What could I do now? What would I rather be seeing at this moment? I thought of my childhood home in the snow. I thought about being outside during a snowstorm, certain that it was only getting colder, and seeing the lights on at home. I thought about the feeling of warming up after being cold, and about who might be inside. They probably would be making dinner, and since I have nowhere else to be, I could go play Minecraft or whatnot until the food was ready. I would hope that there would be someone to play with, but if not, I could just pace around the house and listen to the sounds of what no longer is.
Only a few milliseconds remained. There was no time for much more considered thought, but the good news is that meant there wasn’t time for fear. It was darker than I would have imagined, the sunlight blocked out by the steel and concrete that could’ve been blamed for my imminent undoing, though really, no single thing was to blame. It was the whole situation. Time’s up. What a boring last thought that was.
After a few moments of nothing, I woke up on a Saturday morning in my dorm room. I was not in a cold sweat or anything — all considered, I was in a pretty decent mood. I texted my group chat to ask whether it was a bad sign that I’d just dreamed I died in spectacular fashion, and then I moved on with my day.