Movie Script Ending

It is this constant joke between us. She calls me a baby. I call her an old lady. I know all about technology. She has good stories to tell. We laugh over the forty year gap between us, and how it makes us different, and how it essentially changes nothing about our friendship. We revel in the fact that we have so much to teach one another.

I have thought about death for as long as I can remember. Long before the first funeral I ever attended. Long before I understood about loss, and sadness, and suffering. Long before I considered what death would mean to those who continued to live, I had thoughts of it. Death meant something else to me then. It was an ending, a final curtain, a magnificent way to wrap up the story of a life. It was dignified and peaceful. It was scripted and rehearsed. It was every movie I had ever watched where someone had died with triumphantly wise words, with repentance, with forgiveness. It was the panning away of the camera as the sunset slid languidly down the hillside.

I have lived my life with the knowledge that someday I will die. It is not a want or need for death, but rather a simple acknowledgement, a small aching awareness inside me that at some point, this will all be over. My story will have reached it's end. I will take my final bow. I will no longer exist here on earth.

And so I have spent my life listening to the words of the dead, of the dying, of the people who have gone deep down deviating paths of their lives that I have yet to set foot upon, that I have yet to know exist. I listen to their advice. I listen to the lessons they have learned, to the things that they regret most in hindsight. It doesn't matter if they are a family member, a friend, a stranger, even fictional. All that matters is that they have something important to teach me, something important to say.

I listen. I open my ears, my mind, my heart to their offerings. I collect them within me. I decided, very young, that I would not repeat their mistakes. I decided that I would take their wisdom and let it soak into my life, let it transform into my own. Sometimes the things I say are generic. Sometimes the experiences I have, the lessons I learn, are no different from any quote about life ever posted anywhere. But more often than not, I am cliché because I am discovering the truth of their timeless honesty. It is not that I'm unoriginal. It's that I'm learning what it means to be human.

It is true; life is short. Sometimes, in the thick of it, it feels long and unbearable. It feels as though I have all the time in the world to do everything that I want to do and such endless possibility, such endless room for lingering, frightens me. Sometimes I wish I could fast forward to a place where I was comfortable, settled, defined. Sometimes I wonder if such a place or time exists for me. More often than not, I think I'll always be a little restless, and more often than not, I like that about myself.

Still, I know from listening, and partially from experience over these past few years, that time moves more quickly than any of us would care to admit. I know that each year arrives faster than the last. I know that it feels like only yesterday that I was turning 22, and before that 21, and before that 16, and before that the first big double digit number. I know that we've got our whole lives to do something, and that's not very long. I feel myself increasingly trying to slow things down, to capture moments, to savor this quick, fleeting life of mine.

I listen to the stories those forty years she has on me have brought her. I read between the lines of her anecdotes. I pay close attention to what she is saying, but moreover, what she is trying to tell me. There are treasures hidden there, beautiful jewels of wisdom and experience that I will add to the growing collection inside me. I will take these gifts. I will use them to learn my own lessons, so that someday I may find a friend who I can share them with. So that someday I may be the teacher as well as the student.

And because life is short, that day will arrive more quickly than I can anticipate. Because they understand things I have yet to experience, their stories are invaluable. Because death is a part of this journey, I intend to live.