The Colossal Sun

What will it be like to visualize your final day?

The decal on the car bore six stripes and the company's name: Rainbows End. I spotted it from the living room alcove, where I’d been waiting since sunrise. When I opened the door, I began chattering. There’s no apostrophe in the name, I said, like Howards End; it’s a beautiful day, what gorgeous light. The woman laid her hand on my shoulder. “You’re nervous,” she said. “That’s normal. Nobody wants to imagine the day they die.” 

Outside the sun was beginning to melt away the snow: oracular patches of gold on white. Inside, it landed just as softly. The woman introduced herself as Van. We sat on the couch, shoulder to shoulder, and she asked if I still wanted to go through with the procedure. I wanted to know more about how it worked. “I’m not in engineering, I’m not in sales,” she said. “I’m just here to lead you through it.” Everyone I knew had consulted with Rainbows End. It was like starting anew, they told me. So — yes, I said to Van, yes, I want to go through with it. 

She patted my shoulder. From her suitcase, she removed a headset and a small tank of water. She arranged the headset on my temples and asked me to dunk my hands in the water. “Count down from one hundred,” she said. I took one last look at my living room: the grandfather clock I had inherited from my mother, the bunting over the fireplace, the leopard figurines that my father had bought in Puglia. Down the street, church bells tolled. I had a rush of fantasies — none of this was real, my whole life had been an illusion, wherever I was going now was the true reality. I closed my eyes and counted.

When my body awakened, I was in a room with many of the same artifacts: the grandfather clock, the leopard figurines. The light was different, though. It was my mother’s house, the one she had bought in her twilight years — which had, after her death, become my brother’s house. But now it was intermixed with all my possessions, as if to imply that I would move there too, sometime before my last day.

I wandered around, trying to recall the floor plan. Here was the kitchen, here was the basement door, here was the powder room, with my ancient face astonished in the mirror. And then, before a memory could halt me, I opened the door to the shrine that my mother had built for my father. This room had always unsettled me. Whenever I visited her in those twilight years, I would feel an unspeakable sadness. For ten years, she would go to this room alone and pine for the man to whom she had committed her entire being. Ten years of her life spent longing for him. 

The room contained photos of my mother now, too, along with photos of my brother and photos of my own husband — Thomas — many years older than when I’d seen him last, his kind face twisted into a death mask. The sun was colossal in that room. Dust motes hung like snowflakes.

And then, without warning, I was back at home, crying, Van holding me tight, asking me how I was, telling me it was okay to feel however I felt. My hands were wet. The water in the tank had turned a muddy red. Why is it that color? I asked. “Nobody knows,” she said.

Hours later, my husband tiptoed downstairs at the time we had agreed upon and took a seat across from me. I stared at him. His face was both young and old. He looked like my brother, like my father, like everyone I had ever known. It was miraculous. Suddenly I had so much love for the world that I didn’t know what to do.