Reflecting on life’s final chapter, as I do, lying here in my grave, I have to say the final chapter was not my finest hour. The energy had waned, joints, and eyes, strained.

Little by little things became too much effort.

Little by little, more and more was ‘too much effort’ until, in those last days, even living was too much effort, and finally, I stopped doing that too.

But you know its not so bad. In the end, you really do need a break from living. It can be a real drudge. Not that I mean to depress.

In that long haul from birth to now, there have actually been many jewelled moments. Unexpected achievements; surprise intimacies; the long deep love of a partner; the joy of discovery.

I mean it. They were wonderful moments and memories. But what use are they to me now. Here I am under six feet of earth. What possible use are they to me.

Then you remind me, sitting up there, six feet above, they are not just my memories. They are shared.

You and I have a memory of life shared. That cute young man I met behind Bintang in Kuta – well it’s a memory I share only with him. All my special moments were special because they were shared.

Between us we make the world, the Universe. Every thread we weave, whether warp or weft adds to the fabric of life, and that fabric is timeless, stretching out across across space and time, creating not just life, but reality itself.

My life may just be a blip in space and time, but it does exist. Always did, always will. And from here I can take a detached view not only of my final chapter, but of all the chapters, and not just from the trapped, confined perspective of my own life, but from the free and detached perspective outside of space, outside of time, delighting in the many blips, jewels that glitter in the fabric of reality as stars did when I looked out beyond myself into the distant heavens and delighted in being a tiny part of it all, and delighted in the fact that my sentience gave me the ability to take that delight.

How lucky I was not to have been a termite, or a rock.