Ezra McNeil lay waiting for that most peculiar moment. Ezra McNeil hung on as best he could. These had been the 99 most productive years of Ezra McNeil's most complicated life. He did not want to die. He was not ready. He wanted, rather as always, to be productive. To Ezra McNeil, dying was not productive. The doctors had said his blood was clotting too quickly, and that it was likely that there were no pharmaceutical remedies that would effectively alleviate the clotting and consequently the platelets that form the clot would monkey pile onto already old and damaged blood vessels. Then, like some time bomb, a piece of the platelet would crack off the monkey pile and like a projectile head directly to his 99 year old brain.
Ezra McNeil thinks to himself: "I have all this money to pay these doctors. I practically own this hospital. I rented the entire south wing of the top floor and employed even the best hematologists from all over the world." Ezra McNeil also had a group of homeopathic fellas gathering various species of flora and insects in the rain forests of Brazil. They would bring back the most exotic and like witch doctors make a cocktail that he hoped would naturally rejuvenate his old arteries.
Ezra McNeil hated waiting. But here he was a prisoner of his oldness, of his non productivity, of his anxiety that something was about to happen that would test his faith in nothingness. He waited and wondered: "I am probably just going to fall asleep and never wake up. That would be pleasant enough. No more bad food. No more smart ass remarks about his atheism. No more of the ineptitude of a subservient world which he had pretty much conquered with his intellect and his lucky streak of investing in just the right commodities at the right time.
Ezra McNeil was an atheist indeed. That was his faith. He lay there fairly comfortable upon his Temperpedic death bed. He wondered at what point the dying would actually begin, not thinking that perhaps he began dying the day he was born. He wondered whether death would be painful. All these years since elementary school, Ezra just knew the truth that we were purely natural phenomena and beyond that there was nothing. Life was like a Gertrude Stein evening dinner with Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald and Alice B. Toklas in which they would drink themselves silly, and amuse themselves with their certainty of "nada." Existence to them was simply a curious chance in the universe, an anomaly. Man's thinking capabilities were simply that, an anomaly, a coincidence of the evolution of an increase in brain size because of the accommodation of the development of smaller mandibles. Intelligence itself was anomalistic, a factor of evolution.
Ezra McNeil had been baptized. He had been sent to Catholic schools, bastions of discipline and learning. The nuns at Sacred Heart Elementary, with their flat-head habits and over restrictive wimples, were effective enough in trying to teach him otherwise. That there was God would always seem so incongruous with the fact his father beat him and his mother took money from other men. He would recall noises in mother's bedroom while dad was out of town. But he dreaded dad returning drunk for the daily discipline. The nuns knew about his life and they could do nothing to convince Ezra McNeil that there was a God any more than there was a Superman. But they did teach him the power of language. He remembers the diagraming of sentences as particularly important to his understanding how to parse words with opponents and make convincing arguments by understanding how to draw blood with a check-mate rhetorical argument. He persuaded many in his 99 year life and it made him rich. In a sense, the nuns made him rich. They also taught mathematics extremely well and so he paused at this thinking that mathematics was the reason he did not believe in God, a God, or Gods for that matter.
Ezra McNeil was indeed on his death bed. He looked curiously at the shiny sterling silver plate sitting in front of him. It seemed out of place with a banana reflecting its yellow and black and the rose next to it reflecting dark green and crimson red. It was such a petty curiosity at such a grave moment as this. Then his mind flitters to the thought, "what if the doctors were wrong?" After all he had already outlasted everyone. He would think that his secret of long life was keeping the mind busy, being productive, making things happen in the world around him. He didn't much care about a world if that world was not revolving around him. Again he thinks: "What if the doctors were wrong about the platelets?" He had lived 99 years when his colleagues were kicking the bucket at 80 and even for some at 55. He had run with the fastest horses on the track and he outlived them all. He thinks a third time, "What if they are wrong?"
The death of Ezra McNeil began at that moment. It began with a very subtle thought. It was hardly a thought. It was perhaps not even a w-h-is-p-urr. He shook his head to brush off the dazzling little spectacle of twinkles in front of his eyes. It was then that he became entranced with the idea that he was in a long white hallway in one of the many non descript office complexes that might have owned throughout the world. It was indeed a trance began by that whisper. The trance was accompanied by a "fuzzy-raindrop-on-a-windshield" perspective that can annoy a peaceful drive along a parkway. At this moment to Ezra McNeil, it was as if his Benz' windshield wipers were not working and he could feel the vehicle slowing down but veering a little out of control. He tried to blink his eyes to rid them of the sparkles that continued to twinkle in front of him and ultimately frustrate him. "What was this?" Ezra McNeil would ask.
That is how the death of Ezra McNeil began. But yet with that being conscious, he concluded he was not asleep as he could see the room environment, the sterile but elaborate fixtures that were placed to try to make him feel at home. He wondered why his assistant would do this since he could never feel at home after traveling the world and living out of several homes, and all the presidential suites he had enjoyed sometimes with or without female company.
Ezra McNeil began his journey into death not having anyone by his bedside. So Ezra senses he is ok The atomic clot has not blown up yet. He has not blacked out. He is kind of amused at this scene before him like "picture within a picture". There is this hallway in one of his complexes but there were no doors except the one at the end of the hall. He wondered if this was one of his or perhaps one of his business partners had contrived a Wizard of Oz like hallway perspective as a joke on any coming for a meeting to the CEOs.
Ezra McNeil spent his whole life being productive that he rarely contemplated anything. However, now Ezra found himself enjoying this particular contemplation. He was perplexed but amused that before him was this hallway through which he traversed. But as he walked down the hall the door destination continued to move consequently farther and farther away. Ezra smiled. He thinks, ", "this is a trick that must have cost one of his global competitors a lot of money."
Ezra McNeil blinked, eyes glazed over but unbeknownst to him. Suddenly, out of the blue it seemed a side door drew itself onto the drywall complete with jam, hinges, and knob, and the door opened slightly. He wondered where this door had come from. He said to himself, "I gotta find out how they did this." But as he was in life, he was never going to let the amusement of a side act door that formed itself and opened itself distract him from getting to the more important door at the end of the hall. He tried shake himself from this amusement and was trying to focus on the reality of the hospital room through what was left of his peripheral vision. The picture within the picture was becoming singular. Ezra McNeil concluded his eyes had not blacked out because he could see stuff in front of him. But he had to admit all of this was strange as if in a dream but yet he had not fallen asleep. Perhaps he was experiencing something that was a function of some medication or herb he had been given.
Ezra McNeil lay still and alone. There was no one seemingly he could call to verify the existence of this hallway in the middle of the hospital room where he lay dying. Ezra McNeil would have disagreed that he was dying anyway if someone told him so. And certainly, this creative burst of artistry before him was the result of a functioning brain. It was proof that he was not even close to death. Sure, he had to be in a wheel chair the past couple of months, but there are kids in wheel chairs who are not dying. But the doctors insisted.
Ezra McNeil had a sensitive sense of smell. He then smelled something foul. "Oh my, I had a bowel movement." he thought to himself. But what he saw coming from the side door was a green iridescent fog, like a visible gaseous mixture heavy with urethane and Pine Sol. He gasped for fresh air. The twinkles in his eyes intensified and began to explode and there was no more peripheral vision. There was no more picture within a picture. What was this? He began to call for a nurse. His finger furiously depressed the buttons and he screamed with all of his might.
No one answered Ezra McNeil on his deathbed. He would have them fired. He would set things straight. Then, something wonderful happened and gave him the chills. Ezra McNeil could see clearly again. "Oh my," he thought, "I have not experienced the atomic clot yet nor would I experience it. I'm not dying." He thought of his brother and how he had not spoken to him for decades. He thought that his brother might find this hallway amusing because his brother Ichabod was a dreamer; a nice guy but unproductive. This was the brother who was mom's favorite and who had wanted to become a priest and never did, but instead, went off and got married, and had a couple of kids one of which amounted to something as a professor in a second tier university. Ezra thought about the reality of his not having children and thought, his employees were his children and he had millions of them. And should he die, all of them would come to his funeral with great fanfare. As he thought of his brother, Ichabod, there was an appearance of a woman and man who looked like mom and dad. Something inside him wanted to break out in tears of joy to see them, but briskly they rudely bumped against him and passed him by as if he was nobody. "I'm not liking this hallucination," Ezra McNeil thinks.
The death of Ezra McNeil ended suddenly in obscurity with no fanfare. The great clot from above had come at the moment of his massive stroke and the thoughts that seemed to be exploding long past the moment of his actual death played and replayed over and over again like a bad celluloid video cassette recorder tape. He called and called for help. Alas, no one would come.
After the death of Ezra McNeil, Ezra did not float above his body or even out of the room. He just laid there dead; but in his own mind, he was not dead but, rather, perhaps almost dead which was worse than being dead because being dead would mean the absolute end to what seemed to becoming a nightmare. That would be better. Then the spectacle began as the hallway before widened and included a vast number of bodies without faces....no eyes, no ears, no noses. It was as though their heads were covered with spandex but they walked without groping. They simply headed for the door that they could not reach much like him, and it became almost like a ballet of sorts, a military march, a choreograph, to the door that they could not get to. They marched stiff legged military style like he had seen so many times in presentations of the Nutcracker Suite. He could almost hear music. This was strange, -- this thing he was sensing. And those who passed him by would, in fact, brush him aside as they also tried to reach the door at the end of the hallway. No one could reach it. But they would turn their faceless heads and peer into him as if they had eyes of jealousy attempting to dissuade him from continuing the competition. He moved on squarely regardless of their presence and so they would stroke their chins and then move on. This was making him angry.
Ezra McNeil's death was a curious thing. After Ezra McNeil had died, he was angry. He was angry because for the first time, he would not be able to win so it seemed. Others had moved in and rushed forward, but he seemed to move at the pace of a turtle. He began to wonder about what was behind that door over there. Hmm. I have not blacked out. The atomic clot has not hit me. I am going to try to run my fastest to the end of the hall and barge into whose ever office this was. What a cruel joke for a 99 year old man to have to bare.
Ezra McNeil's arms suddenly became elastic and str-e-t-c-h-e-d like taffy so that they were longer than the hallway. His hand, so far removed from his body by such an elongated reach, grasped at the door knob like it was a piece of elaborate fruit. But his elastic hand stuck to the knob. "Hooray," he thought, he had beaten everyone to the destination door. The only problem was that his face could not look in. because it was many feet away from his face being able to peer inside. But as he turns the know and the door opens, there was that awful smell again. Ezra quickly shuts it even among the pushing hoard cluttering up against the door. Then things got really complicated with side doors forming and opening and making such a clatter and then Ezra McNeil was engulfed in the moment. The large brick of a platelet had finally reached his brain. No one cared if he lived or died, but in his mind, he was alive and at least you'd think someone would shake him from this dream. It had to be a dream or at the worst a coma. Death? This psychic activity in front of him was proof he had not died yet. He could not have died since he was having this dream. Dead people don't dream or even have nightmares. ....unless.....unless...
Ezra McNeil, the atheist died alone. He died with a bad dream replaying itself over and over again. It was the bad dream of aloneness where he would be in an existence that he could not dominate or control. He was no more real than a door knob that forms itself. He was no more real than he had been when he could see people with faces. This was a world of people without faces. Had he gone crazy? He could not have died as he never blacked out, and also if there was something after death, he would have seen himself floating above his dead body and he would have a sky vision perspective of the elaborate funeral with town criers crying and choirs singing and preachers eulogizing such an important figure in the world as Ezra McNeil.
Ezra McNeil had no consciousness that he was no more, that he was dead as a "door nail." There is no end to the tale of woe of Ezra McNeil's death. It was Ezra who wanted himself to continue and never die, and should his body give out, he would only expect a blackness of nothingness. But as he perceived life as productivity, so even in death, his inner self that he never came to know force continued Ezra into an eternity he did not believe in. He beat down every opportunity to see something more of the world than his perspective of getting from one end of the hall and through the door of importance and productivity. The sad thing is that Ezra McNeil would never know that he had actually died. He would be in a non existent existence within the context of a reality he could not ascribe to since after all he was a very smart man and had lived 99 years.
Ezra McNeil's elaborate grave site was something to gawk at. There was a large tent. Of course, it was a rainy day. Can't have a funeral without the sky crying. The funeral directors would look at each other mystified that someone so famous would have no one, no one show up, not even the suck-up assistant. Lowering the coffin into the vault, they would drive off headed for the nearest pizza parlor. And only the grave digger was left present eating his baloney sandwich. Such was the death of Ezra McNeil.
Ezra McNeil thinks to himself: "I have all this money to pay these doctors. I practically own this hospital. I rented the entire south wing of the top floor and employed even the best hematologists from all over the world." Ezra McNeil also had a group of homeopathic fellas gathering various species of flora and insects in the rain forests of Brazil. They would bring back the most exotic and like witch doctors make a cocktail that he hoped would naturally rejuvenate his old arteries.
Ezra McNeil hated waiting. But here he was a prisoner of his oldness, of his non productivity, of his anxiety that something was about to happen that would test his faith in nothingness. He waited and wondered: "I am probably just going to fall asleep and never wake up. That would be pleasant enough. No more bad food. No more smart ass remarks about his atheism. No more of the ineptitude of a subservient world which he had pretty much conquered with his intellect and his lucky streak of investing in just the right commodities at the right time.
Ezra McNeil was an atheist indeed. That was his faith. He lay there fairly comfortable upon his Temperpedic death bed. He wondered at what point the dying would actually begin, not thinking that perhaps he began dying the day he was born. He wondered whether death would be painful. All these years since elementary school, Ezra just knew the truth that we were purely natural phenomena and beyond that there was nothing. Life was like a Gertrude Stein evening dinner with Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald and Alice B. Toklas in which they would drink themselves silly, and amuse themselves with their certainty of "nada." Existence to them was simply a curious chance in the universe, an anomaly. Man's thinking capabilities were simply that, an anomaly, a coincidence of the evolution of an increase in brain size because of the accommodation of the development of smaller mandibles. Intelligence itself was anomalistic, a factor of evolution.
Ezra McNeil had been baptized. He had been sent to Catholic schools, bastions of discipline and learning. The nuns at Sacred Heart Elementary, with their flat-head habits and over restrictive wimples, were effective enough in trying to teach him otherwise. That there was God would always seem so incongruous with the fact his father beat him and his mother took money from other men. He would recall noises in mother's bedroom while dad was out of town. But he dreaded dad returning drunk for the daily discipline. The nuns knew about his life and they could do nothing to convince Ezra McNeil that there was a God any more than there was a Superman. But they did teach him the power of language. He remembers the diagraming of sentences as particularly important to his understanding how to parse words with opponents and make convincing arguments by understanding how to draw blood with a check-mate rhetorical argument. He persuaded many in his 99 year life and it made him rich. In a sense, the nuns made him rich. They also taught mathematics extremely well and so he paused at this thinking that mathematics was the reason he did not believe in God, a God, or Gods for that matter.
Ezra McNeil was indeed on his death bed. He looked curiously at the shiny sterling silver plate sitting in front of him. It seemed out of place with a banana reflecting its yellow and black and the rose next to it reflecting dark green and crimson red. It was such a petty curiosity at such a grave moment as this. Then his mind flitters to the thought, "what if the doctors were wrong?" After all he had already outlasted everyone. He would think that his secret of long life was keeping the mind busy, being productive, making things happen in the world around him. He didn't much care about a world if that world was not revolving around him. Again he thinks: "What if the doctors were wrong about the platelets?" He had lived 99 years when his colleagues were kicking the bucket at 80 and even for some at 55. He had run with the fastest horses on the track and he outlived them all. He thinks a third time, "What if they are wrong?"
The death of Ezra McNeil began at that moment. It began with a very subtle thought. It was hardly a thought. It was perhaps not even a w-h-is-p-urr. He shook his head to brush off the dazzling little spectacle of twinkles in front of his eyes. It was then that he became entranced with the idea that he was in a long white hallway in one of the many non descript office complexes that might have owned throughout the world. It was indeed a trance began by that whisper. The trance was accompanied by a "fuzzy-raindrop-on-a-windshield" perspective that can annoy a peaceful drive along a parkway. At this moment to Ezra McNeil, it was as if his Benz' windshield wipers were not working and he could feel the vehicle slowing down but veering a little out of control. He tried to blink his eyes to rid them of the sparkles that continued to twinkle in front of him and ultimately frustrate him. "What was this?" Ezra McNeil would ask.
That is how the death of Ezra McNeil began. But yet with that being conscious, he concluded he was not asleep as he could see the room environment, the sterile but elaborate fixtures that were placed to try to make him feel at home. He wondered why his assistant would do this since he could never feel at home after traveling the world and living out of several homes, and all the presidential suites he had enjoyed sometimes with or without female company.
Ezra McNeil began his journey into death not having anyone by his bedside. So Ezra senses he is ok The atomic clot has not blown up yet. He has not blacked out. He is kind of amused at this scene before him like "picture within a picture". There is this hallway in one of his complexes but there were no doors except the one at the end of the hall. He wondered if this was one of his or perhaps one of his business partners had contrived a Wizard of Oz like hallway perspective as a joke on any coming for a meeting to the CEOs.
Ezra McNeil spent his whole life being productive that he rarely contemplated anything. However, now Ezra found himself enjoying this particular contemplation. He was perplexed but amused that before him was this hallway through which he traversed. But as he walked down the hall the door destination continued to move consequently farther and farther away. Ezra smiled. He thinks, ", "this is a trick that must have cost one of his global competitors a lot of money."
Ezra McNeil blinked, eyes glazed over but unbeknownst to him. Suddenly, out of the blue it seemed a side door drew itself onto the drywall complete with jam, hinges, and knob, and the door opened slightly. He wondered where this door had come from. He said to himself, "I gotta find out how they did this." But as he was in life, he was never going to let the amusement of a side act door that formed itself and opened itself distract him from getting to the more important door at the end of the hall. He tried shake himself from this amusement and was trying to focus on the reality of the hospital room through what was left of his peripheral vision. The picture within the picture was becoming singular. Ezra McNeil concluded his eyes had not blacked out because he could see stuff in front of him. But he had to admit all of this was strange as if in a dream but yet he had not fallen asleep. Perhaps he was experiencing something that was a function of some medication or herb he had been given.
Ezra McNeil lay still and alone. There was no one seemingly he could call to verify the existence of this hallway in the middle of the hospital room where he lay dying. Ezra McNeil would have disagreed that he was dying anyway if someone told him so. And certainly, this creative burst of artistry before him was the result of a functioning brain. It was proof that he was not even close to death. Sure, he had to be in a wheel chair the past couple of months, but there are kids in wheel chairs who are not dying. But the doctors insisted.
Ezra McNeil had a sensitive sense of smell. He then smelled something foul. "Oh my, I had a bowel movement." he thought to himself. But what he saw coming from the side door was a green iridescent fog, like a visible gaseous mixture heavy with urethane and Pine Sol. He gasped for fresh air. The twinkles in his eyes intensified and began to explode and there was no more peripheral vision. There was no more picture within a picture. What was this? He began to call for a nurse. His finger furiously depressed the buttons and he screamed with all of his might.
No one answered Ezra McNeil on his deathbed. He would have them fired. He would set things straight. Then, something wonderful happened and gave him the chills. Ezra McNeil could see clearly again. "Oh my," he thought, "I have not experienced the atomic clot yet nor would I experience it. I'm not dying." He thought of his brother and how he had not spoken to him for decades. He thought that his brother might find this hallway amusing because his brother Ichabod was a dreamer; a nice guy but unproductive. This was the brother who was mom's favorite and who had wanted to become a priest and never did, but instead, went off and got married, and had a couple of kids one of which amounted to something as a professor in a second tier university. Ezra thought about the reality of his not having children and thought, his employees were his children and he had millions of them. And should he die, all of them would come to his funeral with great fanfare. As he thought of his brother, Ichabod, there was an appearance of a woman and man who looked like mom and dad. Something inside him wanted to break out in tears of joy to see them, but briskly they rudely bumped against him and passed him by as if he was nobody. "I'm not liking this hallucination," Ezra McNeil thinks.
The death of Ezra McNeil ended suddenly in obscurity with no fanfare. The great clot from above had come at the moment of his massive stroke and the thoughts that seemed to be exploding long past the moment of his actual death played and replayed over and over again like a bad celluloid video cassette recorder tape. He called and called for help. Alas, no one would come.
After the death of Ezra McNeil, Ezra did not float above his body or even out of the room. He just laid there dead; but in his own mind, he was not dead but, rather, perhaps almost dead which was worse than being dead because being dead would mean the absolute end to what seemed to becoming a nightmare. That would be better. Then the spectacle began as the hallway before widened and included a vast number of bodies without faces....no eyes, no ears, no noses. It was as though their heads were covered with spandex but they walked without groping. They simply headed for the door that they could not reach much like him, and it became almost like a ballet of sorts, a military march, a choreograph, to the door that they could not get to. They marched stiff legged military style like he had seen so many times in presentations of the Nutcracker Suite. He could almost hear music. This was strange, -- this thing he was sensing. And those who passed him by would, in fact, brush him aside as they also tried to reach the door at the end of the hallway. No one could reach it. But they would turn their faceless heads and peer into him as if they had eyes of jealousy attempting to dissuade him from continuing the competition. He moved on squarely regardless of their presence and so they would stroke their chins and then move on. This was making him angry.
Ezra McNeil's death was a curious thing. After Ezra McNeil had died, he was angry. He was angry because for the first time, he would not be able to win so it seemed. Others had moved in and rushed forward, but he seemed to move at the pace of a turtle. He began to wonder about what was behind that door over there. Hmm. I have not blacked out. The atomic clot has not hit me. I am going to try to run my fastest to the end of the hall and barge into whose ever office this was. What a cruel joke for a 99 year old man to have to bare.
Ezra McNeil's arms suddenly became elastic and str-e-t-c-h-e-d like taffy so that they were longer than the hallway. His hand, so far removed from his body by such an elongated reach, grasped at the door knob like it was a piece of elaborate fruit. But his elastic hand stuck to the knob. "Hooray," he thought, he had beaten everyone to the destination door. The only problem was that his face could not look in. because it was many feet away from his face being able to peer inside. But as he turns the know and the door opens, there was that awful smell again. Ezra quickly shuts it even among the pushing hoard cluttering up against the door. Then things got really complicated with side doors forming and opening and making such a clatter and then Ezra McNeil was engulfed in the moment. The large brick of a platelet had finally reached his brain. No one cared if he lived or died, but in his mind, he was alive and at least you'd think someone would shake him from this dream. It had to be a dream or at the worst a coma. Death? This psychic activity in front of him was proof he had not died yet. He could not have died since he was having this dream. Dead people don't dream or even have nightmares. ....unless.....unless...
Ezra McNeil, the atheist died alone. He died with a bad dream replaying itself over and over again. It was the bad dream of aloneness where he would be in an existence that he could not dominate or control. He was no more real than a door knob that forms itself. He was no more real than he had been when he could see people with faces. This was a world of people without faces. Had he gone crazy? He could not have died as he never blacked out, and also if there was something after death, he would have seen himself floating above his dead body and he would have a sky vision perspective of the elaborate funeral with town criers crying and choirs singing and preachers eulogizing such an important figure in the world as Ezra McNeil.
Ezra McNeil had no consciousness that he was no more, that he was dead as a "door nail." There is no end to the tale of woe of Ezra McNeil's death. It was Ezra who wanted himself to continue and never die, and should his body give out, he would only expect a blackness of nothingness. But as he perceived life as productivity, so even in death, his inner self that he never came to know force continued Ezra into an eternity he did not believe in. He beat down every opportunity to see something more of the world than his perspective of getting from one end of the hall and through the door of importance and productivity. The sad thing is that Ezra McNeil would never know that he had actually died. He would be in a non existent existence within the context of a reality he could not ascribe to since after all he was a very smart man and had lived 99 years.
Ezra McNeil's elaborate grave site was something to gawk at. There was a large tent. Of course, it was a rainy day. Can't have a funeral without the sky crying. The funeral directors would look at each other mystified that someone so famous would have no one, no one show up, not even the suck-up assistant. Lowering the coffin into the vault, they would drive off headed for the nearest pizza parlor. And only the grave digger was left present eating his baloney sandwich. Such was the death of Ezra McNeil.
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