No day is a good day to die, but today is as close as it could get. It’s a Saturday evening with a beautiful sunset. The date is September 3rd, 2021. I have lived a good life. The question has crossed my mind before, but now it will be my last thought. The question nobody is around to answer, the question we spend our lives asking. The question of course being, what’s next? What happens after we die? Of course, I’m a logical person; heaven and hell don’t even cross my mind as a possibility. Reincarnation has always been my best guess, or maybe I’m just trying to avoid the obvious conclusion: Nothing. 

I close my eyes. I open them. I’m somewhere else. Was I wrong? Is this heaven? No, I’ve seen a place like this before… somewhere. I try to remember where and when, but all I can remember is… 

Three years later. “Do you know what day it is?” I try to remember Monday, Thursday, Tuesday, no. Monday, Tuesday, Friday. Friday kind of sounds like fried egg. I want a fried egg. “Can I have breakfast?” “First tell me what day it is.” I know the day before today was Sunday, so today must be Saturday. “Saturday,” I say confidently. “No, it’s Monday. It’s ok, you’ll get it next time.” I wish I was a grownup, then I’d know everything. I see a paper on the wall. There are numbers and letters. Mom told me about numbers and letters, but I don’t understand them yet. J A N U A R Y 1913. “Breakfast!” I eat my egg and toast quickly.

Twenty years later. Today I graduate college. I’ve almost always been the oldest in my classes because I was behind when I was younger, but now here I am graduating from one of the most competitive schools in the country. I don’t know why I decided to go to MIT. I was choosing between here and Yale. Although, I’m glad I chose to go here because in 1931, there was a huge earthquake that affected pretty much the whole Yale campus. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised by that…  Well, that’s me, better go…

Thirty years later. Now that the war is over, everything seems so normal. I served in the military as a medic, which I am thankful for, because I never got injured seriously. I’m here at the memorial honoring my friends. I have a sudden wave of deja vu. No, not deja vu, different. I feel like I was here as a little boy, in this exact moment, with these exact people. I turn to my left and see a little boy, and for a moment I think he is a figment of my imagination; but he is really there, and suddenly I feel like every little movement that he makes is exactly what I did, almost as if he is like me from another life. Then, suddenly, I forget all about the little boy.

Forty years later. As I breathe my last breath, I feel a sense of familiarity and comfort, as I am born again.