Death hadn't happened exactly how I had expected. Then again, I never really expected to die so young. I had always figured I'd go the same as anyone else in my family. Some kind of heart disease or cancer at the ripe old age of sixty-seven like my grand father before me, and his father before him. Instead it happened in a four car pileup with an eighteen-wheeler on the interstate at the age of 23.

Dead on impact. No lengthy hospitalized goodbyes. Just me. There one second, gone the next. Perhaps gone would be a rather concrete way of putting it. Didn't quite feel right. Because I didn't feel gone, I felt- well I felt me. I was here, just not there; wherever here was.

So much time alone gave me a chance to grieve my loss of life and grieve I did. I mourned the loss of my family, the loss of my friends, I even mourned losing the smaller stuff like my job, house, and car. Every thought was of something I no longer had. The constant ache of losing everything I had worked for was my only companion.

Though I knew not how much time had passed and my memories of that existence are minimal and scattered, I would always remember what had come next. I've no memory of being born the first time it happened, however I was excruciatingly aware the second time around.