In the beginning of every day there was something I always called ‘a sense of mourning’. I would usually talk about it with the woman that I lived with. A girl my age who attended the same college. That morning that we got into the car she hid away beneath long blonde bangs and held herself tightly to keep from the frigid morning. 

“It’s probably where the word ‘morning’ comes from, don’t you think? Like, we’re all mourning that deceased self who had the bravery to fall asleep despite all the things that could happen to us. That person is now dead, therefore it is the period of ‘mourning’. It’s nonsense, but it almost makes sense if you don’t think about it too long, huh?” 

She smiled under the veil. 

I inherited these questions from a me that was long dead, and she smiled at me. Then, if we are in a state of constant death, should we not then live as though it were our last day on earth? I did not mean it in that way that the pessimists thought, as all life moves onward towards that inevitable conclusion and, therefore—or so the pessimist says—to live is to die. I was still referring to my bland observation of nightly expiration and daily rebirth. 

“There are twins in this house. Death and Life. There was poetry like that, I think. If the DALY score of a population was 22, then wouldn’t that be expected? Like Daylilies, flowering for only one day a year.” 

Days passed with that same sentimentality as the car turned down the boulevard. My hands were hot as they gripped the wheel so I rolled my window down. In the passenger seat the woman remained smiling with limp arms that could no longer feel the cold air. 

“It was once better to believe that one was alive than to accept that one was dead. Nowadays, with things becoming less devoted to happiness and more concerned with duty, one prefers to think of themselves as a zombie. Just a shuffling image of what they used to be. Living in constant nostalgia for those days of joy. They’ll be at work in a factory or a grocery store, just doing some menial task and reminiscing about a camping trip they went on the year before, or the decade before, or even when they were young. This habit keeps on into their old age, and they are no longer able to discern anything in the present with clarity. They just live on in memories like the dead.” 

The mourning was cold and my suit felt stiff and hot. I had gotten to the point that my ill-health could hardly control my body’s temperature. Just one part of growing old. I gripped my steering wheel and the sun glinted across my ring finger. Just one part of living in the past. I looked into the empty passenger seat and made use of the only thing the aged souls could, and I reminisced about my youth in college, and about the girl who I lived with. She was really patient, putting up with my melodramatic philosophizing on the way to school, to work, to the hospital. So many years gone, I could still recall our little exchanges.

She could no longer hide beneath the bangs that were not there. Day after day I could not help but try and maintain my sense of normalcy. Perhaps, talking about death, I could keep myself from the morning sentiments that I always spoke of. She looked at me with that effervescent smile as the dawning sun covered her face.

“What would you do if I died?” 

After thinking for a moment I could only give her one answer.

“I guess I would live.”