Pretend that, like the title character from A Prayer for Owen Meany, you were aware of the date and some of the details surrounding your own death. Write a 500 word piece based on this concept. It is due tomorrow at the end of the period.
As I lay on the operating table I feel my skin shivering through my bones it was extremely cold in that room. I was so sick to my stomach that I started feeling nauseous. I was so scared it was only I in the room except for the doctors and nurses. I was getting surgery on my stomach; I had an ulcer in my stomach that was big as a orange. They had to remove it immedily because it was giving me way to much problems I was constantly in and out of the hospital I couldn’t believe that I was going through so much pain. As I lay on the operating table I thought in my head that this would never go away and I hope to get through this without any complications, such as death or bleed out. The doctors were talking to me as they did my surgery on my stomach to make sure that everything was going as planned, I wanted to sleep but I couldn’t because I wanted to stay awake for what was going to happened to me. I was wondering a lot I wondered if recovery was going to be as long as the doctor said it was going to be or if I was going to going my strength back fast. It was also depressing because no one could be in the operating room with me to make me happy and not let me think about the negative things that could happen to me without me knowing it. I was on a very strong antibiotics that took the pain right off of me I was numb from my shoulders to my toes. I didn’t like this feeling because I didn’t want to depend on a drug that I do not need. While I continued to dose off I could hear my family outside in the waiting room waiting for me to come out of surgery. I began to have simple dreams about where I could be right about now, and what I could be doing instead of getting surgery. I was hopping that I could awake anytime soon and see my family confronting me and bringing me get well soon cards and teddy bears but it didn’t happened as I planned I kept here my heart beat go as fast as a clock, it was getting worst by a minute. It was crazy I didn’t know what was going on with me my doctors said that I could bleed out very badly if they cant find out what is going on with me. It was to much on inside my body I was monitored for everything in my body it felt so uncomtorble , because my family were there and my blood was dripping and no one knew what was going on with me. I could hear about 20 doctors in the room with me, so many different voices in my ears. I couldn’t understand anything that was going on, I couldn’t open my eyes either, so I just lay there not knowing what was going on. A few hours I was in a comma I could hear different voices but I couldn’t recognize them what so ever. The doctors told my family that I passed away within an hour everyone started to break down and cry.
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” -Mark Twain
I stared at the quote in my writing notebook, that held everything I had ever written or anything that interested me. That quote stood out like the moon against a black sky among all the scribbles of writing on the page. I thought that once I got older I would try to live by this quote. I would live my life fully, reading each page slowly, carefully, but with a hunger to get to the next one. That was not the case. I would close the book ,forever, stuck in chapter one. I knew that the day after my nineteenth birthday was the day I would die. I had been shown through persistent, vivid dreams, that my last breath would escape from my lips as I slept peacefully. That was the only thing that gave me comfort, that I would go without pain. Sunlight creeped through the window of the airplane as I placed my notebook into my pack. People began to stir as flight attendants walked up and down the aisle, gently shaking them and telling them it was time to put their seatbelts on. I looked out the small window to see rectangular fields of green and a vast sky of blue , we were landing in Ireland.
I fumbled with my key to the hotel room and heard the click. I swung the door open and stumbled inside. The door slammed behind me has I tried to walk to the bed that was more pillows than anything else. I swayed as I walked ,the world seemed like it was tilting on it’s side, I grasped the edge of the wall and tried to steady myself. I gave up and slid down the wall leaning my head against it. After the flight I had dropped of my bags at the hotel and went sight seeing, pausing to take pictures or to write things down into my notebook. I returned to my room only to get changed, drop off my backpack, and head to a club where I had one too many drinks. Now I found myself on the floor, staring out a window of stars. I never understood why people drank alcohol every day like it was their only life force, but I did then. They didn’t drink alcohol for the pleasure of it but to make them forget the terrible things that came along with life. I wasn’t an alcoholic but that day the cloud of grief that was always following me was unbearable and I just needed an escape. I needed anything that would make me forget ,even for a moment, that death was inevitable. Of course I had always known it was inevitable but it seemed so far away like hearing about a war that happened hundreds of years of ago; it was real but had no connection to yourself. Most days I tried to push the knowledge to the back of my mind along with the all the grief. It was a foolish thing to do because all the excruciating pain broke over me, pushing me a thousand miles into the deep as I sat there. I hugged my knees as sobs shook my whole body uncontrollably. My heart was filled with so much grief and sadness I thought I would explode from the weight of it all. Tear after tear rolled down my cheeks and onto my legs. I yelled through each shattering sob at the unfairness of the world. It wasn’t fair. Didn’t I deserve a life as much as anyone else? Didn’t I deserve to read my book until the end? I was angry and stricken, the emotions tumbling inside of me. Each tear, sob, and scream was for a loss I felt. I mourned for the innocence of my sister that would soon bear a weight to immense for her to carry. I mourned for my father and mother who would have a gaping hole in their hearts that would never be filled, the pain never duller. I mourned for my friends;for some I would become a distant sad memory, for others I would be ever present in their minds. I mourned for all them, for not appreciating them, for not asking more questions about themselves, for not being everything my family and friends deserved. But most of all I mourned for myself. I cried for the priceless moments, memories that I would never experience. I would never feel the silk of my wedding gown as I walked down the aisle, or hear the cry of my first child, or meet my first love. All of it gone, slipping through my fingers as death gave me it’s chilly kiss of eternal sleep.
As I look through my papers, I see a small piece of paper with a bunch of numbers on it. I stare at it and think to myself, “What do these numbers mean?” Without thinking anything of it, I threw the paper into my garbage can. As I continue with my work, one of my co-workers goes up to me and states how I should try to interpret the paper. I took the paper out of the garbage can and put it flat on my desk. The person who told me to keep the paper has always been very mysterious. He started to work here only a couple of weeks ago and he has been giving me very creepy vibes. At first, I didn’t think much of it, but now it’s starting to become a trend. Later that day, I am watching the news and I saw that there was an accident on the highway. It was unclear of exactly how many people died, but a lot of people did. A piece of paper fell out of my pocket, and it happened to be the piece of paper with the numbers on it. It said, “23132014.” I later learned that two people died in that crash, also, the date was 3.13.2014. I thought about how weird the coincidence was. The next day at work, I saw that creepy coworker again and he asked if I saw the news. I questioned why he was asking me and he simply said,”Just thought you should know what will happen to you in the future.” I immediately closed my office door and thought of how good of a driver I am. I looked at the piece of paper and saw 13142014you,” on the paper and I freaked out. I finally realized that I was going to die tomorrow. I didn’t care about the creepy person who hinted my death at me. I went home that day and said my final goodbyes to myself. That morning, I woke up which surprised me. I guessed my death was going to happen during the afternoon. Instead of going to work, I stayed at home and sat in my basement. I made sure nothing was around me and I just stared at the floor. Not saying anything, I thought about how I was going to make it through the day. All of the sudden, I felt the floor shake and realized an earthquake was occuring. Knowing about the numbers on the paper, I ran and sat under a table so I wouldn’t die. At the time, death was the only thing on my mind. I couldn’t believe I was about to die. Knowing I was going to die was a very traumatizing thought. Something landed on the table and broke it. I was laying under the crushed table completely motionless. I was stuck under the rubble. I thought I was a gonner until my neighbor came in and rescued me. Right after he rescued me, a vase landed on his head. He was knocked out and I thought he took my place on the list. I rushed him to the hospital after the earthquake and he survived. We both lived and to this day, I can’t believe how I escaped my fate. Or, maybe those numbers were a cruel joke. All I know is that, I never saw that creepy coworker again.
It is amazing how fast something can be taken away from you. One second you are happy and then the next you are cold. People have always said life is short, so go and enjoy it. However, my life will be short and it was not what it was suppose to be. It was incomplete. And soon enough my life would be over. Three more years. That is all I have left. Born in 1998 and gone in 2017. I will never see my younger sister graduate. I will never see my baby cousin turn five. I will never grow to meet the person I love. I will be frozen in my teenage years. What would you do if you had an expiration date? Who would you see? What would you do if you were told you only had three more years to live? Here is how I, Samantha Mauriello was going to die. It is okay to cry. It is okay to be mad at the world. But it was not okay to stay home and waste away. So I did something about it. I went outside my comfort zone and maybe I went to far out of my zone because I died traveling out west. I made a pit stop in the box state of Kansas. Soon I would realize it would be a deadly decision. Did you ever imagine want your death would be? I didn’t think I would go like this. The wind got blown out of my lungs. My body collapsed from lack of oxygen. The gray chalky dust swirled into the heart pounding and sweaty hands funnel. I vowed to never go back to this alley. I went when I was ten and nine years later I was back. I do not know how I got here. All I know is that I won’t be leaving here alive. The dust blocked any sight from my eyes. I stumbled into the open field, trying to outrun the twister. I tripped on the mountain sticking up from the ground that was the feet to the massive maple tree that was soon ripped from this earth. The violent rotating column of air picked up the tree like a speck of fuzz. I clenched my bruised and cut up hands onto the field of straw for dear life. They say your life flashes before your eyes. But that did not happen for me. I just saw all the flying debris inside the gray swirling mass of destruction heading towards my feet. It seemed to curtsy at me. As if apologizing for stealing my life right from my hands. My body got flung up into the sky. The last memory I have is being swooped into the tornado. I was flown into the mouth. The picket fence houses and the mini vans smashed into my body. I heard the piercing sound of the bones snapping and breaking. The clear, but sharp rigid pieces of glass scraped across my cheek. The pain was overbearing. By the time the twister was done with me, I was ready to go. I was ready to move on from this. I was ready to die.
As I lay on the operating table I feel my skin shivering through my bones it was extremely cold in that room. I was so sick to my stomach that I started feeling nauseous. I was so scared it was only I in the room except for the doctors and nurses. I was getting surgery on my stomach; I had an ulcer in my stomach that was big as a orange. They had to remove it immedily because it was giving me way to much problems I was constantly in and out of the hospital I couldn’t believe that I was going through so much pain. As I lay on the operating table I thought in my head that this would never go away and I hope to get through this without any complications, such as death or bleed out. The doctors were talking to me as they did my surgery on my stomach to make sure that everything was going as planned, I wanted to sleep but I couldn’t because I wanted to stay awake for what was going to happened to me. I was wondering a lot I wondered if recovery was going to be as long as the doctor said it was going to be or if I was going to going my strength back fast. It was also depressing because no one could be in the operating room with me to make me happy and not let me think about the negative things that could happen to me without me knowing it. I was on a very strong antibiotics that took the pain right off of me I was numb from my shoulders to my toes. I didn’t like this feeling because I didn’t want to depend on a drug that I do not need. While I continued to dose off I could hear my family outside in the waiting room waiting for me to come out of surgery. I began to have simple dreams about where I could be right about now, and what I could be doing instead of getting surgery. I was hopping that I could awake anytime soon and see my family confronting me and bringing me get well soon cards and teddy bears but it didn’t happened as I planned I kept here my heart beat go as fast as a clock, it was getting worst by a minute. It was crazy I didn’t know what was going on with me my doctors said that I could bleed out very badly if they cant find out what is going on with me. It was to much on inside my body I was monitored for everything in my body it felt so uncomtorble , because my family were there and my blood was dripping and no one knew what was going on with me. I could hear about 20 doctors in the room with me, so many different voices in my ears. I couldn’t understand anything that was going on, I couldn’t open my eyes either, so I just lay there not knowing what was going on. A few hours I was in a comma I could hear different voices but I couldn’t recognize them what so ever. The doctors told my family that I passed away within an hour everyone started to break down and cry.
ReplyDelete“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” -Mark Twain
ReplyDeleteI stared at the quote in my writing notebook, that held everything I had ever written or anything that interested me. That quote stood out like the moon against a black sky among all the scribbles of writing on the page. I thought that once I got older I would try to live by this quote. I would live my life fully, reading each page slowly, carefully, but with a hunger to get to the next one. That was not the case. I would close the book ,forever, stuck in chapter one. I knew that the day after my nineteenth birthday was the day I would die. I had been shown through persistent, vivid dreams, that my last breath would escape from my lips as I slept peacefully. That was the only thing that gave me comfort, that I would go without pain. Sunlight creeped through the window of the airplane as I placed my notebook into my pack. People began to stir as flight attendants walked up and down the aisle, gently shaking them and telling them it was time to put their seatbelts on. I looked out the small window to see rectangular fields of green and a vast sky of blue , we were landing in Ireland.
***
I fumbled with my key to the hotel room and heard the click. I swung the door open and stumbled inside. The door slammed behind me has I tried to walk to the bed that was more pillows than anything else. I swayed as I walked ,the world seemed like it was tilting on it’s side, I grasped the edge of the wall and tried to steady myself. I gave up and slid down the wall leaning my head against it. After the flight I had dropped of my bags at the hotel and went sight seeing, pausing to take pictures or to write things down into my notebook. I returned to my room only to get changed, drop off my backpack, and head to a club where I had one too many drinks. Now I found myself on the floor, staring out a window of stars. I never understood why people drank alcohol every day like it was their only life force, but I did then. They didn’t drink alcohol for the pleasure of it but to make them forget the terrible things that came along with life. I wasn’t an alcoholic but that day the cloud of grief that was always following me was unbearable and I just needed an escape. I needed anything that would make me forget ,even for a moment, that death was inevitable. Of course I had always known it was inevitable but it seemed so far away like hearing about a war that happened hundreds of years of ago; it was real but had no connection to yourself. Most days I tried to push the knowledge to the back of my mind along with the all the grief. It was a foolish thing to do because all the excruciating pain broke over me, pushing me a thousand miles into the deep as I sat there. I hugged my knees as sobs shook my whole body uncontrollably. My heart was filled with so much grief and sadness I thought I would explode from the weight of it all. Tear after tear rolled down my cheeks and onto my legs. I yelled through each shattering sob at the unfairness of the world. It wasn’t fair. Didn’t I deserve a life as much as anyone else? Didn’t I deserve to read my book until the end? I was angry and stricken, the emotions tumbling inside of me. Each tear, sob, and scream was for a loss I felt. I mourned for the innocence of my sister that would soon bear a weight to immense for her to carry. I mourned for my father and mother who would have a gaping hole in their hearts that would never be filled, the pain never duller. I mourned for my friends;for some I would become a distant sad memory, for others I would be ever present in their minds. I mourned for all them, for not appreciating them, for not asking more questions about themselves, for not being everything my family and friends deserved. But most of all I mourned for myself. I cried for the priceless moments, memories that I would never experience. I would never feel the silk of my wedding gown as I walked down the aisle, or hear the cry of my first child, or meet my first love. All of it gone, slipping through my fingers as death gave me it’s chilly kiss of eternal sleep.
ReplyDeleteAs I look through my papers, I see a small piece of paper with a bunch of numbers on it. I stare at it and think to myself, “What do these numbers mean?” Without thinking anything of it, I threw the paper into my garbage can. As I continue with my work, one of my co-workers goes up to me and states how I should try to interpret the paper. I took the paper out of the garbage can and put it flat on my desk. The person who told me to keep the paper has always been very mysterious. He started to work here only a couple of weeks ago and he has been giving me very creepy vibes. At first, I didn’t think much of it, but now it’s starting to become a trend.
ReplyDeleteLater that day, I am watching the news and I saw that there was an accident on the highway. It was unclear of exactly how many people died, but a lot of people did. A piece of paper fell out of my pocket, and it happened to be the piece of paper with the numbers on it. It said, “23132014.” I later learned that two people died in that crash, also, the date was 3.13.2014. I thought about how weird the coincidence was.
The next day at work, I saw that creepy coworker again and he asked if I saw the news. I questioned why he was asking me and he simply said,”Just thought you should know what will happen to you in the future.”
I immediately closed my office door and thought of how good of a driver I am. I looked at the piece of paper and saw 13142014you,” on the paper and I freaked out. I finally realized that I was going to die tomorrow. I didn’t care about the creepy person who hinted my death at me. I went home that day and said my final goodbyes to myself.
That morning, I woke up which surprised me. I guessed my death was going to happen during the afternoon. Instead of going to work, I stayed at home and sat in my basement. I made sure nothing was around me and I just stared at the floor. Not saying anything, I thought about how I was going to make it through the day. All of the sudden, I felt the floor shake and realized an earthquake was occuring. Knowing about the numbers on the paper, I ran and sat under a table so I wouldn’t die. At the time, death was the only thing on my mind. I couldn’t believe I was about to die. Knowing I was going to die was a very traumatizing thought. Something landed on the table and broke it. I was laying under the crushed table completely motionless. I was stuck under the rubble. I thought I was a gonner until my neighbor came in and rescued me. Right after he rescued me, a vase landed on his head. He was knocked out and I thought he took my place on the list. I rushed him to the hospital after the earthquake and he survived. We both lived and to this day, I can’t believe how I escaped my fate. Or, maybe those numbers were a cruel joke. All I know is that, I never saw that creepy coworker again.
It is amazing how fast something can be taken away from you. One second you are happy and then the next you are cold. People have always said life is short, so go and enjoy it. However, my life will be short and it was not what it was suppose to be. It was incomplete. And soon enough my life would be over. Three more years. That is all I have left. Born in 1998 and gone in 2017. I will never see my younger sister graduate. I will never see my baby cousin turn five. I will never grow to meet the person I love. I will be frozen in my teenage years. What would you do if you had an expiration date? Who would you see? What would you do if you were told you only had three more years to live?
ReplyDeleteHere is how I, Samantha Mauriello was going to die. It is okay to cry. It is okay to be mad at the world. But it was not okay to stay home and waste away. So I did something about it. I went outside my comfort zone and maybe I went to far out of my zone because I died traveling out west. I made a pit stop in the box state of Kansas. Soon I would realize it would be a deadly decision.
Did you ever imagine want your death would be? I didn’t think I would go like this. The wind got blown out of my lungs. My body collapsed from lack of oxygen. The gray chalky dust swirled into the heart pounding and sweaty hands funnel. I vowed to never go back to this alley. I went when I was ten and nine years later I was back. I do not know how I got here. All I know is that I won’t be leaving here alive.
The dust blocked any sight from my eyes. I stumbled into the open field, trying to outrun the twister. I tripped on the mountain sticking up from the ground that was the feet to the massive maple tree that was soon ripped from this earth. The violent rotating column of air picked up the tree like a speck of fuzz. I clenched my bruised and cut up hands onto the field of straw for dear life. They say your life flashes before your eyes. But that did not happen for me. I just saw all the flying debris inside the gray swirling mass of destruction heading towards my feet. It seemed to curtsy at me. As if apologizing for stealing my life right from my hands. My body got flung up into the sky. The last memory I have is being swooped into the tornado. I was flown into the mouth.
The picket fence houses and the mini vans smashed into my body. I heard the piercing sound of the bones snapping and breaking. The clear, but sharp rigid pieces of glass scraped across my cheek. The pain was overbearing. By the time the twister was done with me, I was ready to go. I was ready to move on from this. I was ready to die.