One
instant one place, the next hovering telephone-pole high over the
lilac bushes in the yard.
Disembodiment
is hard to get used to, mostly because while I knew I wasn't attached
to my physical form, it felt little different from when I was, except
for the lack of aches and pains, and floating in the air and all.
Below
me was me.
I
looked kind of crumpled up and damaged lying on the ground
practically underneath the kayak trailer in the driveway. There was
blood oozing out of my one temple, and my ubiquitous eyeglasses were
hanging askew from my ashen face, unbroken, but badly bent.
My
glasses, that is. Not my face.
It
was still daylight, and the last thing I recall doing as a captive of
gravity was bending down to pick up a bagged newspaper near the
street. It was a newspaper, incidentally, delivered weekly, un-asked
for, and unread.
How
it had become my undoing, I did not know.
Then,
in answer to my confusion, time unwound as I floated.
There
was a loud roaring of a large, overloaded dump truck from some
landscape company rumbling toward my reanimated body from the
highway, arcing around the bend at the top of the hill near our house
and barreling thunderously forward.
Flesh-me
hardly seemed to notice.
At
precisely the moment I bent down to pick up the offending newspaper,
a fist-sized, decorative, polished river stone used in expensive
landscaping bounced out of the careening truck's cargo bed and headed
unerringly toward my head.
It
looked like a primitive projectile shot from a mechanical dinosaur.
I
watched the rock, which at this point was traveling at the same
velocity as the speeding truck, strike my temple as if aimed.
I
went down like a felled gnome.
My
body hit the gravel driveway in a bleeding, crumpled lump. This made
me very sad, floating there, like my best friend had just been badly
hurt.
That
is apparently the moment I transitioned from life to death. Or was it
the other way round?
I
realized that the impending reentry into my physical shell was not
going to be fun.
It
was going to hurt, and I looked forward to it not at all.
Then
I heard footsteps on the gravel driveway running toward me from the
house, and a panicked cry from my youngest child.
"Daddy!"
she screamed.
...and
I opened my eyes from the ground, reawakening with a start that sent
shockwaves through my brain.
"Ow!"
I croaked weakly, as she knelt down next to me on the stones,
trembling in fear.
"I'll
be fine," I said, trying to smile as I turned my battered face
towards hers, rolling slowly over onto my back.
I
managed to hold her as she burst into sobs of relief.
"I
thought you were dead, Daddy!"
"It's
OK, Sweetheart. It's OK."
© Bill Lilley 2011, 2013
