text: I took a step off the ledge of the office building and let the wind, and then the warm concrete, embrace me. And upon impact, it was silent void--black and sensationless, the feeling of legs and the sounds of cars driving past entirely absent--but my dwindling consciousness, hanging by a thread, remained. When the weak, grizzly voice of an older man grew from behind me, my thoughts, already incomprehensibly fuzzy and confused, turned into a panicked frenzy. But there was no jolt down my spine, or increase in heartbeat. I had no body to feel surprised with. His voice, thick and tinged with a hint of New York Jew, felt distantly familiar. “You’re not supposed to be here, and you know it.” It took me a second to gather myself together again, but I discovered that upon thinking the words, *Turn around*, it was only a moment before I was looking into the eyes of a short, stubbled man with a beer belly and a hairline that could only be the product of age. “I’m sorry?” He removed a wide, beefy hand from the pockets of his khakis and smoothed out the bright, button-down hawaiian shirt he wore. Slowly, he took a step through the emptiness in my direction. The way he stroked his chin echoed nonchalance and he repeated calmly, “You’re not supposed to be here. You know that, and I know you know that.” “Do I know you?” “No. I’m nobody. Don’t think about that. If you really screwed up this bad, then your consciousness is probably falling away, and you might find that it’s getting harder and harder to remember things like the name of your wife--” “I don’t have a wife.” “Yes, you do--things like the name of your wife, where you work, where you were born, et cetera. So don’t waste time thinking about who I am. You made a mistake.” I found it difficult to believe, but I took a brief moment before speaking again to try to remember my supposed wife. In my mind, as if recalling an old framed photo that had sunken into the forgettable white noise and static of my bedroom, I blew off the dust and recalled the vague shape of an early middle-aged woman--maybe mid-30s--with hair that, though hazy, was clearly brown. She had no name and in my mind’s eye, she had a variety of different eye colors, none of them sticking quite right. “That’s Elise,” he told me. *Elise.* God, she was beautiful. “Yes. She is,” he continued. “But tell me, why did you do that? What the hell made you think it was a good idea to take a running jump off a five-story office building?” Stupidly, I paused before speaking. The English language was slipping through my fingers like sand, and with whatever faculty of speech I had left, I spoke. “Life was bad. It was evil. I was being beat up over and over. The universe was mean to me and I was tired of it. I just wanted this. I wanted this feeling.” “Describe the feeling, Caleb. Keep that language side of your brain active. At all costs. Do you understand me? Describe the sensation.” “Calm. I feel calm. Quiet. Big quiet. Small noise. No sound. No feeling.” “*Bigger than that, Caleb,*” the man said, his tone getting more intense. He took his other hand out of the pockets of his khakis, and the flowers on his Hawaiian shirt wrinkled as he raised his arm and snapped rapidly, “Use bigger words! Don’t just say the feeling, *make me feel the sensation!* Do you understand me?” Even in death--or whatever this was--I still felt the rising pressure coming from this short man. As my mind strayed away into oblivion, I clung to what I could and frantically stuttered what few descriptive words came to mind. “Sad but happy--happysad,” I stumbled. “*No*\--not happy. No, no, I feel--*elated*.” “*Excellent*," he hissed. "What’s your wife’s name?” He was barely giving me time to think, but the answers were starting to come more naturally. “Elise. Her name is Elise. I feel like I’m trudging through a warm lake. It’s a summer’s evening and I feel secure, and there’s no risk of me drowning. It feels good.” “*No, not ‘good!’ Tell me more!*” Like an olympic runner in the last lap, with a final burst of mental adrenaline, I felt language, familiar and beautiful, flood my thoughts again. “It feels relaxing and transcendent, like all the work of the philosophers in eons’ past, the consideration of what death means and the never-ending questions of what comes after it are about to be momentarily answered. The coming moment is the oxymoronic crux of existence in which we miraculously lose everything but find ourselves with knowledge the likes of which none have ever known. I’m oblivious to problems and the sensation brings a quiet, droning tinge of regret because I miss--*Elise!*\--but the anticipation is over and I’m soon to know what it means for a story to end. I remove myself from the hurricane that surrounds me and find myself in the eye of the storm, where everything is peace and I no longer need to question the world.” In the following few seconds of silence, in the absence of a body and the blood to course through it, anxiety ran quick through my veins. The man stood silently, and I wondered if he would disappear soon, if this was it, and I was nearly onto the “next life.” Slowly, began crossing his arms while a wide, smug grin crawled across his face. “They’re saving you.” “What?” “You could only speak like that if there were somebody there, next to you, saving you. They might be using defibrillators or any other sort of thing, but Caleb, I think you’ll be on your way soon. So tell me, how do you feel?” Knowing that I finally had the English language at my disposal once again, I allowed myself a few moments to consider his question before answering. “Devastatingly defeated.” “You shouldn’t. There’s more to this than you think. The life you lead is a sad and difficult one, and nobody could deny that, but at the end of the day, all of this is in your control.” The man looked down at his watch. “I’m betting you’ll be back in a couple minutes or so. Be ready, though, kid. It’s going to hurt. A lot. Remember, you’ve just jumped off a building.” “I don’t want to go back.” “I know you don’t. Nobody ever does.” “There are more like me?” It didn’t take long for the stupidity of the question to smash me like a brick. I didn’t need an answer. How in hell could I be the only one? “Of course there are more like you,” he scoffed. And he was right to do so. “You think you’re the first to try to kill yourself? It’s a mistake, but it’s an easy mistake to make.” He was right. It was unfair to believe that I was the only human tempted by the ledge of an office building. No doubt that there were alternatives elsewhere. People jumped off of cliffs, buildings, out of helicopters. People found ways. Where there was a ledge there was a temptation that, more often than I might have thought, was just strong enough to prompt action. But that wasn’t fair. Why should others succeed--should get that relief--and not me? Why do some succeed, and I’m forced to go back? The sensation of death was addicting, and at least according to the man, in mere moments, it was going to be forcibly taken from me. The man in the hawaiian shirt apparently detected my rising frustration. “Kid,” he said with a tired sigh, “you gotta understand that it’s *good* that you’re being saved. Your time hasn’t come yet.” I still stood in silence. I didn’t know what else to do. There was nowhere to go, and there was nothing to feel. My consciousness remained in full strength but my body was a ghost. I had never realized until then just how unpleasant the sensation of having a body was. Arms, legs, aching back, having problems or stressors, all those sensations were just upsetting, distant memories. I imagined the paramedics kneeling next to my mangled body on the concrete outside the office, speaking quickly and mechanically into their walkie-talkies, knees stained with blood, frantically stitching my broken self back together. It was funny to see them caring so much about a body. It was just a body, after all. The man continued. “You don’t think it, but you’ve still got more living to do. I know. Trust me. You’ve still got a lot more to go.” He paused, and his grin faltered. His voice, with its cigarette-stained rasp, lowered to a whisper with a tone as soft as velvet. “Elise would miss you, you know.” The gentleness, as much as it ached with honesty, somehow felt crooked on a voice that had so much fallen victim to drinking, smoking, and old age. It was a few moments before I could word what I was thinking, but when I could, the words clicked like a missing puzzle piece. “If I’m going to be forced to continue living, I refuse to let it be for the sole purpose of making *other* people happy.” In the time it took me to speak, we mirrored one another. His face contorted with surprise as the words washed over him, and I held myself back from giving a triumphant “Hmph!” But it was true. I’d got him. He gathered his thoughts and opened his mouth, hesitating for a moment, and then launching into his exasperated response. “Caleb, that’s what life is. People live for *you*. It’s a responsibility. Without other people in our lives, we’d all off ourselves. We rely on one another.” I almost interrupted him, but he didn’t give me the chance. “Don’t worry, kid, I’m not gonna try to shove some false-optimistic bullshit down your throat about how life is beautiful. Life is hell, and it’s always unfair, whether it’s unfair in your favor or in somebody else’s. But it’s a whole lot better with other people in it. We’re all in this perfect gridlock where we each have to stay alive for each other to make life more bearable. But at the core, I guess you’re right, it’s a system that’s a bit screwed up. But hey,” he said with a weak chuckle, “if you’ve got a better alternative, you go on ahead and make me the first to know.” It was a minute or two before I responded. My mind was running at full speed, and I knew that if the blood was pumping through so much of my brain already, it wouldn’t be long before I regained complete consciousness and I awoke at the foot of the office, my life officially unpaused. But I took my precious time. This was a conversation that was not going to be rushed, even if that meant cutting it short. “Why are you trying to talk me out of this and everything if life isn’t anything more than some sort of ‘hellish gridlock’?” “Because I want to know you’re making an educated decision. Maybe you’ll wake up and find that life really is hell. That it doesn’t get better, that Elise is mediocre at best, that your future children don’t deserve to live, that, I don't know, *chocolate* isn’t worth living for. And if that’s the case, then shoot. By all means. Jump off an office building. Leap in front of a moving train. Drive off a cliff, for all I care. But if you’re doing it, you oughta know *what* it is that you’re doing. Now you have an idea of what dying is like, and more importantly, at least I sure hope, you’ve got an idea of why you should live. You *do* live for other people, Caleb. It’s a bear and a burden and a difficult responsibility, but they’re doing the same thing for you. Remember, they’ve thought about jumping off a ledge somewhere else before, too, and when they considered it, they thought of you and pictured tears running down your cheeks at their funeral. You do it for them, they do it for you. So yeah, it’s maybe a bit hellish. But there are a lot of great parts to it, too. “Think hard, Caleb, about Elise. Remember when you met?” I didn’t need to jog my memory anymore. The image of the two of us on the footbridge was brought forth with ease and efficiency. “Brooklyn. 1992. On the bridge, when we both saw the spare change in the stream and both tried to get there first.” I tried to resist, but my lips involuntarily curved upward just a bit. “That was a good time. Did you wanna die on that bridge?” “I see where you’re going with this.” “Sure you do. But am I wrong? Again, feel free to shove a shotgun in your mouth when you get back, but make it an educated decision. Think of the bridge. Think of Elise’s eyes.” The image came easily and at my command: her eyes were a glistening auburn brown. “And ask yourself, did you wanna die at that moment? If not, then kid, you've just proven to yourself that there's stuff in life that's worth living for, that's bearable. And then, once you’ve thought about all of that, fine. Fine. At that point, it’s outta my control. You make your choice. Go on ahead and off yourself however you want to, if you really think that's the right choice, all things considered. I mean it." The words slowly sank into me. Whether they were warm water or scorching flames, I couldn't quite discern. Maybe it was a bit of both. It was then that pain--fierce, fiery pain--pierced through me with a vengeance, as if life were trying to make up for the pain I had missed while in the void without a body. I had allowed myself to, even for just a moment, experience the bliss of not knowing what it meant to have a physicality. And it was all coming back, whether I liked it or not. The pain crashed over me like a waterfall, coming in thick, aching waves. "You're coming back, kid. Good luck out there. I know it's tough. It's a real bear, like I said. And don't worry, you'll come back soon enough. Just give it a few years and you'll die eventually. Just be patient, okay?" I hissed through gritted teeth as my body was reborn, bit by bit, stab by stab. "*Who the hell are you?*" His voice echoed faintly around me, getting farther and farther away with each syllable. "Don't worry about it." As his shape faded away, it was replaced by blinding light, and as if careening uncontrollably through a narrow tunnel, the burning, aching pain only booming louder in my ears, I felt warm concrete underneath me. More importantly, I *felt.* My eyes blinked open to autumn trees above me and the sidewalk below me, the blood already forming a sticky film on my skin. Three paramedics knelt over my body, beaming with wide, searching eyes like spotlights, the defibrillator lying on the concrete next to me. Stunned that I wasn’t a lost cause, it was only a moment before they began frantically shouting, gathering together mysterious tools and tinkering with my body, right there on the concrete, like a mechanic working rapidly on a customer’s car when there was another customer waiting in line. My blood served as the engine oil on their knees--a badge to wear, boasting of a hard day’s work. The pain had swallowed me whole and dissolved into a numb, tingly TV static, and as I faded in and out of consciousness and witnessed the paramedics above me flicker into and out of existence, rage filled me and made my heart sore. A rage that entered unwelcome and would fester silently over the next two weeks in the hospital, and hibernate into a thick, viscous disdain for the doctors that stole death from me. It was only when Elise was finally allowed to see me that the aching of fermented anger began to fall away in small clumps. The paramedics, with an incomprehensible yell, handed the man kneeling closest to my head a syringe. I felt pressure on my arm, and the paramedics, still flickering in and out of view, after some deliberation, finally came to a solid conclusion and flickered into decisive nonexistence. I found myself in a hospital bed, hearing the A/C whir, feeling the cold air on the few parts of my skin not hidden by a cast, and remembering Elise’s face. It was 15 days later while I was lying in my cast on the hospital bed, two doctors standing on either side monitoring me like guards, that she cautiously peeked her head around the corner, flowers in her hands. The rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor quickened and I relished in my ability to look at her face and see that, for the past couple weeks, my memory had been astoundingly accurate--down to the shape of her eyebrows, the exact hue of her hair, and the way her eyes squinted when she smiled. Many years ago, young love gave us thrill because it was risky at the time, and when things teetered on edges, the passion grew tenfold. In that sanitized, white hospital room, we were floating on a bridge back in Brooklyn in 1992 and we were filled with the naive longing of young love. It was a fire that had burnt itself away years ago, but something about the temporary loss of life stoked the flames again, and I think we both knew somewhere that it wouldn’t last and that after this, there would be a wall. But good feelings are addicting and when love presented itself to us, we both greedily took our share and relished in it unthinkingly. When the adrenaline of risk wore off, we were different, but not altogether worse. We still loved each other, but she was scared of losing me, and I was scared of staying. I knew I’d be back in the void soon enough, and she knew that I knew that. And on my end, there was a newfound peace that I attributed to the man in the Hawaiian shirt. She never liked that, and she had asked me more than a few times in superficially playful conversation what it had been like to be dead. And I always told her the same thing. “It was warm. Relaxing and transcendent. Enlightening.” And she would change it up occasionally, sometimes mocking me for sounding like Buddha, sometimes mocking me for sounding like Jesus. For months, I never brought up the man in the Hawaiian shirt after I mentioned it to a doctor the day I woke up and was told that it was a form of mid-mortem hallucination. It was five months later, visiting my family in Vermont, that I finally spoke about it with my mother. We sat on the end of my old childhood bed, smaller, springier, and more welcoming than I remembered. She nodded along patiently, staring off into the orange late-autumn forest wallpaper and allowing the story to marinate in the tense air before inhaling it and truly processing it. She didn’t say a word. I went on for as long as I needed to, describing in detail the man’s shirt, the way he spoke, and what he told me. Why I was still alive, and why I was going to continue on living for her, for Elise, for dad. My words left a heaviness and a depth hanging over the room that slowly, my mother’s ears absorbed like sponges. I finished, and we sat in silence. Admiring the familiar autumn wallpaper, I imagined the sound of the vibrant leaves rustling through the air as they floated to the forest floor and waited for the first frost, signalling the new season. The aged bed creaked as she, without a word, cleared her throat and pulled her purse onto her lap. Tenderly, she reached in and removed from its contents a small photograph of the man with the Hawaiian shirt and the khakis I’d seen in the void. She cleared her throat. Her speech didn’t waver, but it remained low as if the gravity of what she was saying pulled it closer to the earth. “I found this photo in the attic a couple months ago. I’ve been keeping it on me for good luck. It’s my grandfather. Your great-grandfather. Elias.” I had never met him, but the name rang a distant bell. Great-grandpa Elias. I’d seen a couple old black and white photos of him, but nothing substantive enough to stick his face in the banks of my memory. “Are you sure this is who you saw?” It wasn’t only the face that made me sure. It was the posture. The way he carried himself. In a black and white photo, a moment frozen in time, his sly, toothy smile and his finger, bony and pointing at the photographer, were dynamic. Without moving, his character seemed alive and well in that moment, moving along as if he were still breathing, drinking, smoking, going about his life. I assured her that this was him. She nodded slowly. “Maybe it was something subconscious. I don’t think I’ve ever shown you this photo. I hadn’t even found it until relatively recently. But, I don’t know, maybe you saw it a long time ago somehow, and maybe it was a hallucination, like you said the doctor said.” She paused, sopping up every detail of her grandfather’s face in the photo. Elias’ smile was infectious. “You know, at Elias’ funeral, years before you were even on the way, we made a lot of jokes about that ostentatious, loud personality of his and about how he was probably up above us somewhere, laughing his raspy, breathless laugh, and probably feeling a little bit left out. It really was all just jokes, I think, meant to help us all cope. Y’know. You say what you have to to deal with people dying. But I’ve sometimes wondered if he really was up there, watching us, listening in. If he was there, in the room, when you were born. I don’t know.” She paused. “I don’t know. But maybe.” She thoughtfully put her arm around me, and after a few minutes of warm, pensive silence and admiring the autumn wallpaper, we descended the staircase, put on smiles, and joined the family again. I approached Elise with the brown hair and the memorable glistening brown eyes, hugged her, loved her, and patiently awaited the day I’d be seeing the void again.