Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

I think it was Shakespeare that said "Parting is such sweet sorrow". But what of those whose parting is also their final bow, their last goodbye, so to speak? You can't always say goodbye, especially when you never got to say hello. What is sweet about the parting of two people destined to be together? Maybe that's why I stayed behind. I'd never met a ghost before, so I wasn't entirely sure about what I was supposed to do.

I'm sure you'd like to know specifics. "What was it like? How did it feel? Did it hurt?" I know your questions because I know I would've asked them myself, had I the same opportunity as you. But that's a different story, for another time. In the mean time, maybe I can answer a few of your questions. Dying is much like living: you spend much of your time wandering around, not quite sure why you're there in the first place, and once you figure it out, you get that twisting feeling in the pit of your stomach that you don't really have much time left to make use of what you've learned. The only difference is that, in life, once you figure everything out, you wake up the next day and realize you're eighty-five. In death, instead of waking up, you fall asleep. At least I have enough time left here in death to tell you that much.

When you come to the end of a journey, you tend to look back at the path you traveled and ask yourself questions. Questions are pesky things; they make us think, they flutter about us like flies, knowing very well that we can't swat all of them, and a few of them will flit and buzz around all of our heads until the day we wake up. But, at the end of a journey, you can always answer the questions that hatch and begin to flit about. They're questions about yourself, like "Am I a better person for the paths I traveled? Am I happy with where I'm at now?" They're questions about where you went, "Would I ever want to return? Why did I leave?" and what you did, "Do I have any regrets?" Yes, I had regrets. If I had to put money on it, I would bet everything I ever owned that I remained for that very reason. A single regret. A single decision I never made. A single girl to whom I never told the truth.