You wake up one morning to let what will happen happen.
I suppose you already know that.
You always seemed to know things before I did.
There is no fighting this morning.
No words exchanged with the universe.
No desperate attempt to force an answer out of something that has never explained itself particularly well.
Just me.
Standing in the kitchen.
Coffee getting cold.
And you sitting quietly inside an urn.
Funny.
You would have hated the urn.
I can almost hear you complaining about it.
Maybe that’s why I started talking to you this morning.
Not because I expected an answer.
The dead don’t answer.
At least not in the way the living want them to.
We want sentences.
Explanations.
Instructions.
Something unmistakable.
Instead we get memories.
Dreams.
A familiar song playing somewhere unexpected.
A smell that stops us in the middle of a room.
A thought that doesn’t feel entirely like our own.
Maybe those things are you.
Maybe they aren’t.
I don’t need to decide anymore.
I just need to tell you something.
I think I’ve been doing the bare minimum with this life.
Not intentionally.
I didn’t wake up one morning and decide to waste it.
Nobody does.
It happens quietly.
Wake up.
Work.
Pay bills.
Answer emails.
Buy groceries.
Clean the house.
Make appointments.
Remember passwords.
Fill the gas tank.
Go to sleep.
Repeat.
Congratulations.
I survived another week.
You remember how people ask how you’re doing?
Busy.
That became my answer.
Busy doing what?
Living?
Not exactly.
Maintaining.
That’s different.
I have become incredibly efficient at maintaining a life.
Everything works.
Everything gets paid.
Everyone gets answered.
Things get handled.
Problems get solved.
The machine keeps running.
You’d probably be proud of that.
Or maybe you’d look at me the way you used to when you knew I was full of shit.
Because somewhere along the way survival became the accomplishment.
Existing became living.
Getting through the week became the plan.
And nobody noticed the difference.
Including me.
That’s the strange thing about the bare minimum.
It doesn’t necessarily look miserable.
Sometimes it looks responsible.
Sometimes it looks successful.
It owns a house.
Has a career.
Pays its bills.
Shows up.
Keeps appointments.
Smiles in photographs.
Remembers birthdays.
Looks perfectly functional from across the room.
But something is missing.
Not happiness exactly.
Something harder to explain.
Aliveness.
You know what I mean, don’t you?
Of course you do.
You’re dead.
That’s probably a terrible joke.
You would have laughed anyway.
Your memorial was beautiful, by the way.
I don’t know if I ever told you that.
The flowers came.
The tears came.
People told stories.
Everyone said the things people say when someone dies.
Then eventually everyone went home.
That’s the part nobody prepares you for.
Going home.
Because death happens loudly.
Grief happens quietly.
Personal belongings were scattered.
Drawers opened.
Closets emptied.
Things were touched by hands that didn’t own them.
Some things were kept.
Some were given away.
Some things I couldn’t decide what to do with, so I moved them from one place to another as though changing their location somehow counted as making a decision.
Eventually the mourning period ended.
Not the missing.
The mourning.
There’s a difference.
I didn’t forget you.
I just started living around the hole.
Humans are remarkably good at that.
We build furniture around our wounds and eventually forget the room was ever arranged differently.
But I’ve realized something lately.
I’ve been letting you make decisions.
Not literally.
You’re dead.
The dead don’t make decisions.
But somehow I’ve allowed memories to vote.
I’ve allowed old grief to choose new experiences.
I’ve allowed things that happened years ago to decide what I’m willing to risk today.
I’ve let previous versions of myself sit at the table like they still own the place.
Maybe that’s why I’m talking to you.
I think I need the chair back.
Not because I don’t love you.
Because I’m alive.
And life is for the living.
That sounds cruel when you first say it.
Life is for the living.
But maybe it isn’t cruel at all.
Maybe it’s the entire point.
You had your mornings.
Your ridiculous days.
Your bad decisions.
Your favorite songs.
Your grudges.
Your laughter.
Your ordinary Tuesdays.
And someday, without knowing it, you had your last one.
That’s the part I keep thinking about.
Did you know?
Did that morning feel different?
Was the coffee better?
Did the sunlight look strange?
Did something inside you whisper, pay attention?
Or was it just another day?
Because that’s what frightens me.
We don’t know when we’re standing inside the moments we’ll eventually beg to have back.
I keep behaving as though there is an endless warehouse somewhere filled with mornings.
I’ll do it later.
I’ll travel next year.
I’ll start when things settle down.
I’ll write the book someday.
I’ll change things eventually.
I’ll go there.
I’ll learn that.
I’ll become that person.
Someday.
You know what’s funny about someday?
You don’t have one anymore.
I do.
And I’ve been wasting the bastard.
Maybe tomorrow.
Maybe next month.
Maybe when work calms down.
Maybe when there’s more money.
Maybe when the timing is right.
Maybe when I’m thinner.
Maybe when I’m braver.
Maybe when I finally feel ready.
Maybe.
There are entire lives buried beneath that word.
I wonder what you’d say if you could answer me.
Would you tell me to work harder?
Probably not.
Would you tell me to buy more things?
Definitely not.
You know what happened to your things.
We went through them.
That’s the cruel little punchline nobody tells us while we’re collecting possessions.
Eventually someone else opens the drawers.
The clothes get donated.
The furniture gets moved.
The photographs get divided.
Someone keeps the jewelry.
Someone throws away the paperwork.
Someone holds some completely ordinary object in their hand and wonders why it mattered so much to you.
A lifetime becomes an afternoon of sorting.
Keep.
Donate.
Trash.
Keep.
Donate.
Trash.
And yet here I am sometimes acting like collecting things is living.
Maybe that’s why the mind starts deleting memories too.
I noticed that recently.
There are things I can’t remember anymore.
Things I thought I would remember forever.
I remember your name.
I remember your face.
I remember the way certain moments felt.
But some details are gone.
Conversations.
Dates.
Arguments.
Little pieces.
At first that scared me.
I thought forgetting meant losing you again.
Now I’m not sure.
Maybe the mind knows there isn’t enough room to carry every moment forever.
Maybe it clears space.
Like an old computer.
Delete.
Delete.
Delete.
Not because something never mattered.
Because something new needs somewhere to live.
I hope that’s true.
Because I want something new to live here.
I think I’ve spent enough time surviving.
I want more.
There.
I said it.
And before the universe accuses me of being ungrateful, I am grateful.
But gratitude and wanting more can sit at the same table.
I can appreciate the life I’ve built and still admit I haven’t been fully living inside it.
I want more mornings where I don’t immediately reach for the world.
More places I’ve never seen.
More ridiculous conversations that accidentally last three hours.
More dinners that become stories.
More music played too loudly.
More wrong turns.
More things that make absolutely no sense on paper.
More moments where I forget to check the time.
More life.
Not more stuff.
Life.
I wonder if that’s what the dead would tell us if they could.
Would you tell me about money?
Or would you tell me about mornings?
Would you tell me about success?
Or would you tell me about the last time everyone sat around the same table?
Would you tell me about the things you bought?
Or the places you never went?
Would you tell me about everything you accomplished?
Or everything you kept postponing because you thought there would be more time?
Maybe that’s why the dead are silent.
Maybe if you told us exactly how little of this matters, the entire system would collapse by lunchtime.
Imagine millions of people waking up tomorrow and realizing they don’t actually care about half the shit consuming their lives.
The emails.
The opinions.
The petty arguments.
The people they don’t even like.
The things they’re trying to prove to people who aren’t paying attention.
The imaginary competitions.
The grudges.
The status.
The endless pursuit of enough.
Enough money.
Enough recognition.
Enough attention.
Enough proof that we mattered.
Meanwhile, the dead are sitting in urns.
I bet you know the answer now.
What was enough?
Was there ever such a thing?
Or was enough simply being here?
Maybe we’ve confused the bare minimum with the whole experience.
Heart beating.
Lungs working.
Morning arriving.
That’s the bare minimum.
That’s admission.
It gets you through the gates.
But then you’re supposed to actually go inside.
And I don’t think I’ve been going inside enough.
I’ve been standing near the entrance making sure everyone else’s tickets are correct.
Typical.
You would laugh at that too.
Sometimes I think about running.
Not away.
Toward.
I don’t always know toward what.
Somewhere unfamiliar.
Mountains.
Water.
A road I’ve never driven.
A room where nobody knows my name.
A life that doesn’t require an explanation.
Maybe that’s restlessness.
Maybe it’s healing.
Maybe it’s simply the part of me that remembers I’m still alive banging on the glass.
Hello?
Are we going to do anything while we’re here?
Because healing isn’t graceful.
I know that now.
Some days I miss you.
Some days I don’t think about you at all.
That used to make me feel guilty.
It doesn’t anymore.
I don’t think you would want to be the first thought in my head every morning.
That would be an exhausting job for a dead person.
Some days I hate the whole world.
I’m allowing that now too.
I don’t need to turn every bad day into a spiritual lesson.
Sometimes a terrible day can simply be a terrible day.
Sometimes I can close the curtains.
Ignore the phone.
Be angry.
Be tired.
Be completely unimpressed with humanity.
Then wake up tomorrow and try again.
Healing isn’t a perfect mood.
It isn’t enlightenment.
It isn’t forgiving everything that ever hurt you.
Sometimes healing is realizing you don’t need to understand something anymore.
You just need to stop living there.
Maybe that’s what I’m doing with you.
I’m moving.
Not leaving you.
Moving.
There’s a difference.
I’m taking you out of the driver’s seat.
You can ride with me if you want.
But you’re not choosing the destination anymore.
Neither is grief.
Neither is fear.
Neither is the person I used to be.
I am.
Because fairytales don’t exist.
Nobody is arriving with the map.
Nobody is coming to build the dream.
There is no narrator waiting for the perfect moment to announce that my real life begins now.
There is no perfect planetary alignment where every obstacle disappears.
Maybe the castle gates were never locked.
Maybe the dragon wasn’t guarding me.
Maybe it was waiting for me to finally decide where the hell I wanted to go.
I think I know now.
Forward.
Not recklessly.
Not foolishly.
But deliberately.
I want to take the trip.
Write the thing.
Change the room.
Learn something useless because it fascinates me.
Eat dinner outside.
Drive somewhere unfamiliar.
Sit beside the water.
Watch the sunrise.
Stay up too late sometimes.
Wake up early for something worth waking up for.
Build something that doesn’t make sense to anyone else.
I want my life to look like mine.
Because there will be a final morning for me too.
Hopefully not soon.
But it exists.
There will be a final cup of coffee.
A final drive.
A final song.
A final laugh.
A final time someone calls my name from another room.
A final ordinary Tuesday.
And I probably won’t know which one it is.
You didn’t get a countdown clock.
Neither will I.
So maybe I should stop treating ordinary days like disposable packaging around the important ones.
Maybe these are the important ones.
Maybe today is.
This kitchen.
This coffee.
This conversation with someone who cannot answer.
Maybe that’s why I’m finally telling you.
I’m done giving life the bare minimum.
I’m done asking only for enough to get through the week.
Enough sleep to function.
Enough money to pay bills.
Enough vacation to keep from losing my mind.
Enough happiness to convince myself everything is fine.
Enough dreaming to imagine another life without actually creating one.
No.
I want the whole damn thing.
The beautiful parts.
The ugly parts.
The mistakes.
The adventures.
The mornings.
The grief.
The laughter.
The things that don’t work out.
The things that become stories.
The moments I won’t recognize as important until years later.
All of it.
And maybe wanting all of it means finally accepting that you can’t come.
That may be the hardest part.
The dead stay in their urns.
The living eventually have to leave the room.
I can love you and still go.
I can remember you and still become someone you never knew.
I can miss you and laugh five minutes later.
I can keep your photograph without keeping myself frozen inside the year it was taken.
I can carry your name without carrying your death.
You had your life.
This one is mine.
And I think, wherever the dead go, you already know what took me this long to understand.
Life is for the living.
Not surviving.
Not waiting.
Not maintaining.
Living.
So I’m going.
There are rooms I haven’t entered.
People I haven’t met.
Places I haven’t stood.
Songs I haven’t heard.
Stories I haven’t written.
Versions of myself I haven’t become.
I don’t know what waits beyond the gates.
For once, I don’t need to.
I reach for the urn before leaving the room and rest my hand against the cold surface.
There are a thousand things I could say.
I choose only one.
I’ll tell you about it when I get there.
Then I take my hand away.
The dead remain where the living lovingly placed them.
The coffee is still warm enough to drink.
Morning is waiting outside.
And for once, the bare minimum of simply being alive doesn’t feel like enough.
So I open the door.
You stay.
I go live.
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