Death's Monologue

Death, I’ve come to think,

is not an ending,

but a quiet transition,

a doorway always waiting

for the hand that finally turns its knob.

The body tempers,

breath rides on the wind;

the heart, once a clock,

becomes the soil’s lullaby.

I think of death,

burial, marked graves—

not out of dread,

but out of wonder.

I stroll through cemeteries

the way some walk through art galleries—

each stone a story,

each name an echo

of a life once burning.

Solitary maple trees

stand steadfast throughout,

their roots threading

between the resting,

their presence crowned

in a gentle, wordless regality,

their branches

holding only silence — no life

outside of their own,

just the hush

the graves have taught them.

I love how personal graves can be.

Some bear marble angels,

some bear laughter etched in stone:

“Time is a gift,”

“Kathy was a loving mother,”

“I’d rather be reading this.”

There’s something achingly human

in the attempt to speak

from beyond the dust—

to say, I was here,

and I still matter.

But there are things I hate—

the boxes, for one.

Those narrow coffins

where bodies stew in silence,

sealed from the feast of the world.

The thought of my own remains

trapped in cold wood

makes my stomach twist.

To be denied the mercy

of becoming food for the soil—

what cruelty.

Still, I dream of reincarnation—

energy never destroyed,

only changed,

cycling from heart to leaf,

breath to flame,

death to a new name.

Perhaps the soul is a seed—

reborn in a new age

under a sun

it has never known.

But cemeteries

horrify me in another way:

the quiet that sinks into your bones,

all those chemical bodies

pickled in preservation,

sleeping side by side

in toxic communion.

I imagine soil soaked

in the soup

of a thousand decompositions—

formaldehyde and flesh

brewing beneath the roses.

The thought crawls up my spine

and rattles behind my teeth.

No—when I die,

let me die free.

Let the parts of me

that can help the living

be taken and used.

Let what’s left be wrapped

in a decomposable shawl,

a maple seed resting on my chest.

Let my decay feed its roots;

let roots take up where veins once ran.

I want a tree, not a tomb—

a living monument,

a rustling eulogy.

Carve this on my stone:

“She gave what she could to humankind,

then gave the rest back to nature.”

Bury me far away—

in a field unbroken by mankind,

where grasses whisper

and weeds grow tall.

Let my maple become a kingdom—

a home for wings, fur, and nature’s beauty,

a field where life’s chorus rings unbound.

Each year I will drop

my seeds to the wind,

and someday

that open field will be a forest—

born from my body,

my belief,

my last gift.

And maybe—

when I am nothing

but earth and leaf,

I’ll feel the rain again

and know

I have lived many lives

and loved them all.

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I believe in death as a return, a giving-back, a way of becoming part of the world again. Our rituals can be loving and meaningful, but they can also keep us from seeing the simple beauty in letting ourselves go back to the earth. This is my way of saying death doesn’t have to be scary—it can be a continuation, and even a kind of belonging.