A Final Note

By Sean Ryan

 

Daniel and Sarah Brown were both in their late 70’s when they pulled into the parking lot of the only motel in their little city of Balmoral, TX. Daniel had gotten out of the car and gone to the trunk and taken out the two tanks of helium that his wife and he were going to use to kill themselves.

Daniel had terminal colon cancer and his wife, though she had nothing physically wrong with her, found it unthinkable to go on living without her husband. They had been married for fifty-two years and had never spent a night apart from one another.

He watched his wife get out of the car. As he set the tanks on the ground and closed the trunk, he said, “Take a look up at the sky and the sun. This is the last time that you’ll see it in its naked and unobstructed form.”

She smiled at him with the pudgy face of her obese frame and winked at him. He felt that familiar twinge of his love for his wife. They’d always had a playful relationship and way with one another. Coming to the end of their lives was not getting in the way of that.

He closed the door and noticed that his wife was walking away from the car. “Will you grab that supply box that we put together? I’ve got my hands full with these tanks.”

She did as she was instructed and they both started to walk towards the motel where they had rented a room on the first floor, room 113. They walked past a man who looked to be headed off to breakfast, or early lunch, and the man looked at Daniel carrying his tanks.

“Do you have a birthday party?” said the man.

Daniel said, without really thinking, “I’ve got a granddaughter who just got finished with her first year of soccer. We’re going to throw a party for her. She loves balloons.” The man smiled and kept on walking.

“Why don’t people mind their own business?” said Sarah.

“He was just trying to be friendly.”

“The world of friendliness is in the past. We live in a time of mind your own beeswax.”

“I know dear, but he was just being kind. Not everyone has suspicious motives for everything they do.”

 

He laughed. “What do you care anyway?”

“I’m just hungry. I think we should order the food when we get in the room. I’m starving.”

“I’ll do that, dear. I’ve still got to make that phone call.” He had to ring his daughter and let her know that he had a key he had already sent to her that she could use to access all of his documents: will, deed to the house, etc.

He was going to tell her that he just wanted her to know how to get hold of it if something should happen to him. He thought about just leaving it all set out on the kitchen table at the house, but he was paranoid about security and thought that somebody else would steal it, plus, he wanted an excuse to have a final conversation with his daughter.

His wife, for whatever reason, did not get on with her own daughter. Her daughter had married a black man, years ago, and Sarah was a hardcore racist, through and through. Daniel could not care less about race, but his stubborn and uneducated wife was a different story.

The couple, headed for a swift death, passed a coke machine on the corner of the motel property and Sarah squealed. “I’m going to get me a couple grape sodas.”

“Get me a root beer.”

“I’m sorry, daddy. I don’t have enough for a root beer.”

“Fine,” he said, thankful, as soda often gave him heartburn. He walked on without her and got to the room marked 113. He realized that he had not checked into the motel and did not have a key. “Shit,” he said. He set the tanks down and walked back, past his wife, who was just pushing the button for her first soda, and with the clank of the first can hitting the bottom of the machine, he said, “I’ve got to go get our key. I’ll be right back. Wait for me.”

A minute later, he walked through the door to the lobby and found an obviously gay man standing behind the counter with his blue hair and lip ring. He was talking on the phone in a heavy lisp. He was Hispanic and, Daniel guessed, about twenty-five. The man kept on talking, even with Daniel standing in front of him. Daniel just smiled. He didn’t really give a shit. He listened to the man talk.

“I was having sex with him and I found out that he had an STD,” he paused, and continued, “But it was the same one that I had. So, of course, I didn’t care. I’ll call you back, Eduardo. I have a customer.” He laughed, maniacally, and set the phone back into the cradle. “How can I help you?”

“My name is Daniel Brown and I have a reservation. I just need to get my key.” The man typed out a few key strokes. He smiled up at Daniel.

“I have it right here.” He reached under the counter and took out a plastic key card. He slid it into a machine and said, “This is how I activate it. You’re all set and ready to go,” he said and passed the key to Daniel. “Is there anything else that I can do for you?”

“No, that’s it for now, but if I think of anything, I’ll just call you from my room.”

“Just dial zero. I’ll be here all day. Have a nice one.”

“You, too,” said Daniel.

The phone rang three times before Daniel’s daughter, Netty, picked it up. “Hey, dad. What’s up? I haven’t heard from you in a while.”

“This is just some housekeeping. I have sent you a key to a safety deposit box and I’m just making you aware that I’ve done this. I don’t want it to come as a surprise to you when it arrives.”

“What’s it for?”

“It’s a repository, as it were, for my assets and will and funeral arrangements and stuff.”

“Dad, you’re scaring me,” she said, playfully.

“There’s nothing to worry about. Your mother and I are getting to the age where we need this kind of care and attention to detail. I’m just calling you to make sure you know.”

“Well, I know now. I want to know what else is going on with you?”

“Well, not too much to report. Just same old same old. You know.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ve got to get out the door. Linda has a birthday party today and I’ve got to get her there on time. She hates when I’m late. I’ll talk to you soon, dad.”

Knowing this was the last time he would ever talk to his daughter, he said, “I love you, Netty.”

“I love you, too. How’s the cancer treating you?”

“Good days and bad days. You know, with plenty of bad days.”

“Stay strong, dad. I wish you’d have visitors, but I know you don’t like them. I understand that.”

“Bye, dear.”

“Goodbye,” she said. He let the voice of his daughter linger in his mind for a few seconds.

“What is it that you wanted for your final meal?” he said to his wife. The excitement of approaching the end of life and end of suffering was getting to him. He actually felt well for the first time in a long time. He listened to his wife list off the foods she wanted and then he made the call.

Thirty minutes later, there was a knock at the door. The black man, fat as Sarah, who had a white beard, was standing there with a bunch of food. “Howdy folks,” he said. “I have your order here.” He checked the paper on the box of pizzas he was holding and said, “All of this, together, will be $89.87.” Daniel handed the man two one-hundred-dollar bills. “That’s quite a tip,” he said.

“We’re feeling generous,” said Daniel. He smiled at the man and shut the door.

Daniel helped Sarah set the food out on the table. They both made a big plate and started to eat. Sarah said, “What do you think you’ll miss most about life?” He knew what she meant. He knew that, likely, while dead, he would not miss anything about life, as he would be a non-player in that arena, but he took the philosophical nature of her question and went on.

“I’ll answer you in the negative. I’ll tell you what I won’t miss. There is too much that I will miss for me to list it all, but I can tell you what I won’t be disappointed about not having to deal with anymore negativity”

He set his plate down and wiped his hands with his napkin. “I have become so fed up with the constant need for conflict and tension in life. I know that this is how stories are told and that humans are addicted to story-telling, but I’ve had enough of this tension, seeping into my bones like so much spiritual fog into the corporeal form. In a very spiritual sense, I’m ready to be released from the cycle of doom that seems to control this planet.”

Sarah just looked at him, nodded her head, and took another bite of her food.

“Well, said,” she added with her mouth full.

It had been decided that he would go first. He was the one with the terminal condition. She was just the one who could not bear to live without him. She had told him that she would go out, right after him. He believed her.

They had one final conversation. “I am going to count on you joining me in the afterlife soon after I’m gone,” he said. “I can’t stand the thought of being alone.”

“I will join you very soon after you’ve arrived. I promise you that. I have no desire to live on after you’re gone. I married you and we told one another that it would be, ‘til death do us part,’ and you’re going to die so that’s the parting. You have to believe me.”

“I do.”

“I’m dependent on you. I can barely function without you. I need you like a bird needs its wings.” She began to break down and cry. “I’m going to miss you, but I’m going to join you very soon after you go. There’s no need to worry about that.” She got up, walked over to him and the two of them embraced.

Then he said, “I guess it’s time to get on with our final exit.”

His wife had sewn the bags that they would use to insert the hose that was connected to the helium tanks. She’d taken both masks out of the box that they’d put together of necessary supplies.

The hose would go up and under the mask, through a slit in the padding that lined the neck hole. The gas would be turned on and the person wearing the hood would breathe in the helium gas and die of a lack of oxygen, but not be in a state of panic or discomfort. It would all go down in a matter of minutes and death would be painless.

“Are you ready to meet the man with the scythe?” said his wife as she made sure the hose was up and under the mask. “I can turn it on at any time.” She had tried to extract some final words from him, but he was too emotionally upset to say any parting words.

He had had one final glass of beer with which he listened to the old Irish song, “The Town I Loved so Well” and broke into a blubbering tear-staining personal goodbye to his life on planet Earth. He nodded his head up and down. She turned on the gas and sent him to his doom, but it was a happy time.

She sat there with him, as he slowly took his final breaths. She watched as he seemed to relax. She could see his face, first in a smile, and then, as it relaxed, there was no look at all but that of a baby in a man’s body who was looking through the window of the mind into the next world.

She imagined what he was seeing. Based on his reaction, it was not black swirls of thorny bushes with blood-soaked leaves and trees wrapped in razor wire. He was not acting like he was seeing the devil himself, complete with pitchfork. He made a final face, as though seeing Jesus himself and then he slumped over in his chair.

She turned off the gas and took his hood off. She did her best to pull him out of the chair and lay him on the ground. She wanted to see him as somehow changed, in his post-living form, but he looked no different. He was just the same, only dead.

He was in her view when she sat in the chair, putting on her own mask, inserted the hose and turned on the tanks. She was gone in no time flat.

She was found, along with her husband, six hours later when there was an urgent message for them, from the front desk. Their house had caught on fire. The man delivering the message, after they could not be reached by the motel phone, found the couple, dead.

They had left a note for the motel staff in the bathroom that said, “The sink drains rather slowly. It’s probably clogged.”

 

Sean Ryan from US is a writer with a passion for the written word. He reads and writes in multiple languages. This widening of his horizons has made a great deal of difference. He lives in San Diego, CA.