My death was unremarkable. My body gave up the fight at the age of ninety-three. My organs shut down and death followed as is the nature of things. I had lived a full life. It may not have been perfect, however, I had few regrets. Remarkably few, given the circumstances. You know that line about your life flashing before you as you die? It’s hogwash plain and simple. What it was in fact, was a fading to black. Blissful unconsciousness, a setting free of the body from the pain of existence. It was in a way orgasmic in its release.

So why am I still writing of all things? That is more interesting than my death. You see regardless of what you hear from people that have come back from the edge. I can tell you it was nothing but their own imaginations at work. There was no out-of-body experience where you got to take a last look around at your friends and loved ones. There was no angel, or ladder to lead you to heaven. More importantly from my viewpoint, no evil creatures were waiting to take me to hell.

In truth you just are. It is difficult to explain in words that you can understand. There are no words that man has created that can explain. You just are, you exist yet you no longer have a corporeal form. You are everywhere at once, yet nowhere.

I do not know how much time passed before I was even aware that I still was. I still thought anyway. I guess if you simplified it, you could say my thoughts still existed. Still, I had no concept of time as to how long it took me to realize I just was. I guess you could say I just waited for something to happen, you know, the angels to arrive or the others. Anything really, I just waited. No, I did not suffer from sensory deprivation, I guess you could say I was aware of everything. I could hear the solar winds; I could feel the power and majesty of the stars. For me, there was nothing hidden or withheld. Yet I really did not pay any attention to it. I was neither bored nor impatient during my awakening time. By awakening, I mean the realization that no one was coming to get me or collect me. There did not seem to be a heaven or hell, yet I wondered if I was not in one of them.

Then for some reason, I noticed it. The solar winds blew across my being. I could feel it like a soft summer breeze rustling across the meadow on a delightful summer morning. I became aware of the delightful sensation of light itself passing through my being. It was delightful, heavenly in fact. No pun intended there. I wondered if I could hear it as well and so I listened.

It started as a whisper; the sound of the very cosmos grew from there. Like a symphonic masterpiece, I could hear all that was around me. I could feel and hear the heart of the very universe and I reveled in it for an eternity. I knew what each note was. A supernova here, the crack of expanding ice on a planet located light-years from me. Each sound forming a note in the ultimate symphony of time.

Then I wished I could see it. And the light I had only felt came into focus. I found I could go anywhere and see anything I wanted with just a thought. I explored the universe and I was like a child. My curiosity was insatiable. I even wondered what a black hole would be like only to find myself to be a black hole drawing everything into myself. I reveled in the feeling as I drew in everything around me. I grew and felt everything coming to me. I swallowed planets, the stars, whole solar systems at first. The whole time reveling in it. Before I could tire, I was soon swallowing complete galaxies and I marveled at the power of the energy I had drawn into myself. I marveled so long in it that I was surprised when the music ended. The solar breeze had stopped and as I looked around the universe was bare, consisting of nothingness. All that was, every bit of matter and energy was now gone, compressed into nothingness inside of me.