Cause of Death — Text and Context

Everything was ready now. No, wait! Quickly I placed a tumbler and a decanter of brandy within easy reach and by them laid a pencil and a pad of paper. It was when I straightened up that I first felt the pounding in my body. My heart pulsed as if it were smashing waves of blood through my veins. In my throat, the large arteries swelled with pressure until I thought I would strangle.

I had to have some physical exertion to relieve the tension. I felt I might faint or have a stroke unless I moved about. My father had been stricken with an embolism at about my age, and I've read such weaknesses are inherited.

So I walked about the house rechecking the locks of windows and doors. Perhaps it was just to keep busy for a few more moments that I even rechecked the pads of cardboard with which I had muffled the bell-clappers on both telephone and door chime. I don't seem to have had many callers for several years now, but I had to avoid any chance of being disturbed.

Somewhat calmed by my exertion, I prepared to lie down, but a sentimental whim moved me like an automaton toward the window. It was the only really unreasoning thing I did.

Like a prisoner denied the light on penalty of torture, I knelt down and looked under the blind. Never was the Sun so dazzling. This slightest lifting of the shade poured onto me a warmth that I had never known before.

An old saying, invading my mind, destroyed the illusion, and laughing a bit nervously at "seeking his place in the Sun," I turned away and lay down.

The dials on my new calendar clock registered 3:15, July 12. Reaching for my pad and pencil, I recorded this and then, refolding my hands across my chest, I lay quite still.

The heat of the day had begun to saturate the closed room. Outside, all was quiet, as if the Sun had mesmerized the world. The insect hum of the electric clock was the only clue of life around me.

Looming large above me in the mirror, the magnified reflection of my face calmed my mind with its placidity. Great-lidded Buddha eyes gazed down, holding in their glow my first understanding of Nirvana.

I knew that it had come. I had reached the boundary where the fear of returnless going stopped the psyche just this side.

My only body consciousness was the heavy _thud_ ... _thud_ ... _thud_ of blood being driven through my veins. I toyed with stopping the thudding, feeling and savoring the pause between those sledge-hammer strokes on my brain--knowing that any one of those pauses lengthened to eternity was death.

Suddenly I shrieked and sat upright. For an instant, my body had completely stopped and I had known it. Only a nameless grasping fear had snatched me back.

My heart beat wildly as I gasped for air. With shaking hands, I poured a drink and gulped it down. It had been close.

Still trembling, I arose and slumped into a chair. I had to organize myself, to think my way along this thing.

What had happened to me?

This one thing I knew: I _could_ do it. I could stop my body at will and I had done it, if only for a second.

This thought reassured me or perhaps the brandy opened my reserve of courage, for I had been sitting in the chair some time.

With caution, I approached the pallet. I regarded it with suspicion, as though there were a deadly scorpion in its folds. Then, jeering at my hesitation, I lay down and composed myself as before. The clock said 5:05. I stirred again only to record this on the pad.

Despite my nervousness, things proceeded faster this time. A morbid excitement carried me along the path I now already knew. And at its end, I flirted with the _stopping_. Going over and stepping back, going over and stepping back.

It was a pleasure exquisite and unique. Once felt, it was unresistable.

I was no longer afraid. I did not have to be. I could stop my body and start it at will. So I let it slip away from me. The thuddings ceased and only the pauses remained--silent, shapeless things in endless procession. And then the great silence. It flowed over me and I was lost.

The silence was too heavy and my thoughts were not my own; they floated up away from me in the silence. I could feel them go, but there was nothing to bring them back. Each thought of protest winged its way into a void with all the rest.