Dearly Departed...

So there I lay, my physical body ghastly white and strangely eerie in its death slumber, rotting slowly away as the crowd sheathed in black moved quietly about. I stood there behind the priest, a transparent shadow of my former self, looking down at the dead body I so strongly wanted to possess yet again. My body had something clutched tightly in its fingers, holding on to it like some talisman of strength. And as I watched the crowd slowly gathered around, mournful and gloomy, whispering softly amongst themselves.

As the funeral proceeded, I looked around at the few faces I had held dear to my heart. They stood holding hands, tears streaming down their faces silently. I was strangely unmoved, unable to feel anything but restlessness. I stared and stared at the crowd feeling no sorrow and no longer craving their love. All I felt was a deep need to possess my physical body and fulfilling some unresolved forgotten purpose that loomed somewhere in between the blurred memories of my past.

I drifted away slowly from the crowd trying to recall what it was I so strongly craved even after death, when all physical and social temptations seemed to have deserted me. And suddenly the crowd parted to reveal a pit dug deep in the ground. The coffin was slowly lowered, its confines holding my decaying body. Unfamiliar faces gathered around the box, softly throwing back the brown earth over the coffin, returning the body to nurture the earth it rose from, with its remnants. As the earth fell over me, shrouding me softly with darkness, my vision blurred. The voices became softer, my transparent self that I had so strongly been aware of diminishing softly and disappearing as more earth fell over my coffin.

I was now desperate, trying hard to recall what it was I so strongly craved. And as my vision and senses blurred further, it came back to me like a flash of lightning in the darkness. And as I faded away slowly into nothingness my awareness clutched tightly around the pen in my fingers knowing desperately somewhere that it wanted to be remembered.