I’m riding my bike in the evening, although the sun hasn’t set just yet. There are clouds covering the whole sky, some quite dark and I can tell that it’s going to storm soon.
I’m on a residential street, the lanes are wide and the neighborhood looks fairly rich. The street curves to the right around a small lake. The water is grey, reflecting the impending rain. There are brief flashes of lightning through the clouds that turn the surface white, but I don’t hear any thunder. I pedal leisurely, having nowhere to be and no home to return to. We are all homeless in dreams.
Up ahead the street is lined with large oak trees on both sides, single file. Perfect sidewalks flank the inside of the uniform trees, and behind the sidewalk on the left lay identical houses with identical perfectly manicured lawns. It is like biking through a movie set, except this movie features only one human being and no background music.
I bike around the turn and a car passes me on my left. I pay it no attention. I’m nearing the first oak tree, a sentinel, silent even as its leaves shake with the breeze. Before I make it to the tree, the air is filled with electricity. I know before it happens that lightning is about to strike the oak tree now only feet ahead of me. When it does, I feel the strike hit me as well. When I fall from my bike, I know I am dead before I even hit the ground. I think my last thought – that the lake looks so lovely in all white. Everything is white.
And then there is nothing.
There is black. There is no sound. There is light with no source and nothing to see with the light anyways.
I have no body. I do not look down to double check this fact, but I know it without looking. I have no physical tension, no bodily stress, no aches or pains, no fibers or bones. They simply do not exist anymore. I have no anxiety, I have no fears, I have no emotions. I have peace without the feeling. I have nothing. I only am.
There is a menu. It stands on nothing, looking like it’s leaning against a wall and was once quite ornate. The background is off-white, the writing is black. The language is not a known language. It is the Death Language. I cannot read the words, but I understand them. There is a divide down the center of the menu. Both sides list the same options. And once again, I understand.
I understand that I now have three choices. Each side of the menu lists bodily functions. Breathing, walking, speaking, and a handful of other important ones. If I chose the left side, I can pick up to three on the list and return to my life knowing that those three functions of my body will be restored back to the way they were before I was struck. The remainder of the functions on the list will never be the same, will never return to full capability. If I chose the right side, I risk all of them. I return to my life and fight for every last option on the menu with the chance that they may all recover back to top performance and also know that none of them may. Or, I can walk away the menu, drift into the void and take the step into the next life.
I look at the menu for only a few moments with not much on my mind. There are no pros and cons lists. There are only the options. None are good or bad, these things do not exist in the In Between. But I know which one I want to pick.
I wake up. I cannot move for a few moments and I do not try. I can feel that I have my physical form back, although I’ve been allowed to keep the feeling-less-ness for a minute more. I notice my emotions and thoughts begin to come back to me, like a trickle of a lazy stream. I am a human again. I have a self. I lay still until everything that belongs to me has returned and then I sit up. I think about the menu, I think about the lightning, I think about the pretty lake in grey and white. I do not think about which side I picked. Instead I think about how grateful I am that I chose to come back.
As I retell this story to a friend and they ask which side I chose, I cannot help but think that this answer will be dissected in some way. I tell them that I chose the right side.
