One day, I found myself in Death’s lobby. It must’ve been my time.

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“Almost your time. Please grab a ticket and your number will be called shortly,” a chipper woman in black said to me.

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Apparently Death even had a bureaucratic process. I looked at the screen above me saying,  “now serving patron number 64…”

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I was 96.

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“We have been very busy lately, so it may take a bit,” the woman remarked. “You know how this business can be.” She shrugged and gestured to a seating area for me to sit in the meantime. 

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The lobby was full of endless rows of chairs and end tables alternating between each other. It looked like an odd yard sale – a mix-match of chairs and tables. Apparently Death also had an eclectic sense of interior design: both organized and whimsical. It seemed to oddly fit the theme of dying, I thought. 

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A couple of patrons sat and waited before me.    I decided to sit in a tall, mauve wing chair. A metal tray table sat to my right, and a light colored, wooden side table to my left. The chair was padded but not super comfy; it did its job and groaned a bit when I perched slowly on it.

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I looked at the screen again. Now serving patron 65… 

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Damn. I’m going to be here a bit. Guess I shouldn’t rush Death though, nodding to myself. As long as I remained here, I was effectively in limbo. A purgatory that was really a large parlor with hand-me-down furniture. 

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I looked around at the fellow patrons near me. Everyone was absorbed in themselves. A few made muffled cries, one coughed, several flipped through magazines, but everyone was in their own spot. No small talk or chit-chat occurred between them.

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I decided to rustle through the wooden side table next to me. In its second drawer, sat an old paper magazine. I pulled it out. Its publication date was December 19, 2019. I blinked and read it again… it was today, the day I arrived in this lobby.

 

Looking down the cover, I saw it was a Life magazine titled “A Woman of the Times – Margaret B. Milton: 1932-2019.” This publication was… about me? “How?” I thought. I opened the book carefully to the first page, weary of its contents.

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The first page spread was colorful with flowers and balloons. Little cherubs floated in the pages’ corners. “Happy Birthday!” it read, “March 2, 1932.” The day I was born – I gasped in amazement.

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Then, for who knows how long, I sat there enraptured as I continued to read. This publication was dedicated to me and my life. It was so quickly printed that I was weary about turning the pages, but I felt compelled to keep going.

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Ads for cloth diapers and children’s cough syrup dotted the next few pages that were my earlier childhood. Pictures of myself and my family looked up happily to my face, waving. 

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In one picture, I sat in my best dress, my Sunday church dress, beaming. It was a pretty little number that I always looked forward to wearing because Sunday meant good things: morning church service with hymns, playing with the neighborhood kids at stick-ball in the streets afterward, and a good Sunday dinner – roasted chicken if we could afford it. It wasn’t very often as meat was scarce during these times of the Great Depression. Vegetable stew from the fruits of the family garden other times. Both meals were wonderful. Mom always had a knack for creating great food to feed all of us even when growing up in the tough years.

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I smiled, remembering that as I turned to my teenage years when I first met my husband to be – Raymond. We first met in grammar school then found each other in the same private high school together. He was a hoot and always making jokes. He made me feel like his queen and loved me to the moon and back. In our entire time together, we were always in love and holding hands. He had warm honey eyes that glowed bright when excited, and he had a tall, confident build. I had a list of what I loved about Raymond D. Milton. Soon, young and in love, we married at eighteen.

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Now, graphics of beautiful flowers, lace and hearts decorated another colorful spread. We stood together in our wedding clothes. “Congratulations on your marriage and best wishes!” the pages cried. It was a lovely spring day I’ll always remember for years to come. I recalled our happy tears as we said “I do” and glided into our first dance as a married couple.

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I kept going on. Page after page, I slowly turned through the book of my life. Ads for new homesteads turned into ads for baby talcum powder. Soon, our first, Kay, and our second, Anne were born. They were two years apart. Both their screaming pink faces peered out in their newborn pictures in the magazine. I remember their tiny warm hands and little hiccups as they slept in my arms after a bottle.

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I paused there and in-between the pictures of their childhood speeding by. How were Ann and Kay doing? I was dead now… did they miss me? Were they mourning me now that I was gone? Such questions stormed my thoughts. The guilt ate at me. I was reeling. I left my two girls alone when they still needed me… even as adults! You’re never too old for a mother!

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Then, I slowly stopped myself. No, I corrected myself. This is life. They will learn. Both of them will lean onto each other and be fine. Family and friends will help them throughout this sadness. They have all this loving world to assist them now. That last thought comforted me. I carried on through the next few pages of my life. 

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Soon, my children grew up and started their own lives. As they grew older, Raymond and I grew more gray. More wrinkles and more stooped as age hit us, but we were still happy. Life had given us a comfortable house with each other and a lovely family with children and grandchildren. Time really did fly by when you went through its pages.

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Then, the parts in my life that hurt me now shown on its book pages, and I wish I could forget them now. But, the magazine didn’t forget, so I must relive these moments with it. It started with Raymond doing little things such as misplacing objects and forgetting appointments. Then, after he briefly forgot who I was, we got the diagnosis – dementia. I was heartbroken.   Over the next few years Raymond became a shell of his former self. I tried to bring up happy memories and times to him when I sat by his bedside. Sometimes, I’d get that crooked smile I fell in love with and my heart soared! 

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But, many times, I was met with a blank stare or an empty sleeping face. I knew Raymond’s essence was still there. It was glowing increasingly dim as his other memories and pieces vanished over the months. He held onto existence for three more years then slipped away on a hazy August afternoon. I couldn’t cry then… not right away, even as intense grief hit me. Oddly though, I was relieved. Raymond could finally rest and be at peace, and myself, I  could take it easy. The tears brimmed my eyes as he laid before me.

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After my love traveled through this very lobby, I knew Death himself would be waiting for me as well to arrive in the near future. Over the next few years, I became frail and thin due to my grief. I forgot to eat and where I was. My mind ceded to the very disease that took my Raymond from me. I didn’t know it at first, but I saw how my children looked at me. It was the same sad, concerned look I gave my husband, I realized. I was reliving that time again… except it was me that was collapsing into pieces versus being the constant rock I was used to being to everyone. The bits and pieces that made me Margaret faded to blackness with only my core memories remaining steadfast until the end. I became like a child again. Ignorant of my state, staring in the abyss of the wood-paneled walls day after day feeling myself become more shallow by day.

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Soon, I became too advanced for my children to take care of me. I moved into a senior home for people with memory issues like me. I was unraveling and disappearing slowly into the black hole of the universe. I eventually forgot the faces of those I loved. When they visited me, I fussed like an infant and blinked at them with no recognition. Looking at these pages now, in this wing chair, I softly cried. The tears dotted the magazine’s pages and the photos looked up at me frowning in concern. They wanted to help comfort me but couldn’t as they were bound to paper.

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I finally calmed down and quietly thanked my loved ones before me for loving me in my lifetime. I wished them the very best as they continue to live their lives, and I hope to see them in the other world...whatever that may be.

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I turned the page and died. This morning, after the breakfast rounds at the senior home, I passed, then found myself in this lobby, waiting on my number to be called. I found myself at the last page and came to a spread of black ink.   On one side, in white letters, stated: “What’s next…”

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“What is next?” I thought. The afterlife? I didn’t know. Would it be the heaven the priests praised over and over during Mass? I breathed in slowly and dreaded not being prepared for what comes. Then, an interesting thought hit me. 

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Isn’t that the beauty of life, the mystery at the end? There’s so many possibilities on “what is next.” Maybe my loved ones on earth will see me, soon reborn, as a motherly golden star watching over them. I would offer them comforting waves of starlight as the generations after me wish on my celestial body. I could turn this former earthly life of day-to-day living to a glowing lifetime of hope. Either way, even if that did not happen, that was fine. I laid my fate in Death’s hands and knew everything would work out.

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I was now calm and opened my eyes. The lady in black is standing in front of me, beckoning me to follow. 

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“He is ready to see you now,” she states and offers her hand out. My wrinkled hand falls into her warm one. We walk together, in silence, leaving Death’s lobby, through the door to what lies next for us all.