text: It happens every year, almost like a ritual, when my family, friends, and ex-colleagues gather together to enjoy the most special day for me--my birthday. But this time it wasn't like my ordinary birthday, instead it was--I think--my last day on Earth. I am laying on my white bed inside a white room where I can hear the beep sounds of the EKG machine, the cotton is very smooth and very comfortable in my skin. My son is sitting on my side and holding my hands and looking at me with sadness. I can see his eyes, his grey eyes, that is telling me that I deserve his pity. Why do I feel like this? Is this what it feels like to be in this situation? To be in your death bed? When I was a kid, my friends always ask me, why do I always use my pencil to color my works? I could not tell them the truth. I always pretend that I know much more, but when I am wrong they always pick on me. I just want to get out of that hell hole. I envy normal people because they are normal, I envy them because they know things. All I ever dreamed about was to go out in the world and see the beauty of everything but it never happened, and time passed by, it just became clear to me that it would never happen. I heard the door crankled and I saw the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life, along with my youngest child and a few of my relatives. I can see her tears in her eyes flowing down like a raindrop on a window pane. I can feel her sadness inside her and I want to remove it from her heart because I do not want her to feel that way. She is holding this paper bag that is covered with what it seems to be a "Happy birthday!" design. I can not even smile no more. My wife is smiling even though she is crying inside, all of my relatives are singing the happy birthday song but all I am thinking about is to when am I going to die. I do not want them to suffer anymore. All I am asking God is to take me away and not make it hard for them anymore. As they were done singing the song, I see my wife taking something inside the paper bag, it is a medium-sized box, covered with a white paper. "Are you ready, my dear?" She said, while she is wiping her tears and smiling at the same time. She removed the paper of the box and put it in my bed. I saw the box in it and I think the box is very light as how my wife lifts it. She opens the box very slow, and took something inside it. It was a small elongated rectangle case. It looks like a case for glasses. Why would they give me glasses? I can see all my relatives faces smiling like my favorite 1970's comedy film. My wife is so excited and you can see that the smile on her face is genuine and it really came from her heart. She walks up to me, on my side, opened the case and said, "Come on now my dear, let us try your new glasses. I am very, very sure you will like it." It was a simple glasses, its rim is black and the color of the lenses is--I think--transluscent and I wonder why they are so excited about this. As my wife put it gently in my eyes, I saw a new world. The world that I have been looking for ever since I was a child. I feel so mesmerized and I can not believe what I am seeing right now. I burst into tears and I can feel the excitement inside me. I want to scream and shout but I can not, instead I asked my wife softly, "Honey, can you please open up the curtains?" As my wife nodded, I can see all of the people inside the room crying and wiping their tears with smiles on their faces. The moment my wife look at me in the eyes before opening the curtains, is the moment that I could finally see the color of her eyes and I can see my whole world inside those eyes. I am very lucky to have a woman like her. The time has come, I am near to rest, the moment they opened the curtains, made me burst more into tears and the beauty of the world punched me hard in the face. I can clearly see how beautiful the world is with colors in it. The leaves are green, the sunflowers are yellow and the all-knowing heaven is white and blue. And before I close my eyes, I grabbed and gripped my wife's hands and look at her with gratitude and saw her messy black eye liner because of her bucket of tears while saying "Thank you!" silently, in her red lips. She kissed me in the forehead and I smiled at her when I took my last breath.