Death. Getting hard to fight against its power, to psych herself from its seduction. Remembering that she is alone now, that her memories of Mike of Mom Dad are only an illusion, nothing tangible that could hold her hand, saying, everything’s ok. Only God’s spirit here in Mother Earth’s home… wind breathing coldly on her face, the blowing snow resting on her freezing face.. Nature is beginning to dig her grave…no…

She looks at the face of the cliff that she had fallen off. A familiar looking place, she had climbed it so many times before. Up ahead of it is a small valley, where they had camped several times before. A place of peace. Was it peaceful here now? She wasn’t sure. So pristine, yet danger lurked within its confines. She thought that the mountain had been her friend—had she been betrayed—where was Mike? Was he alive? She sees blood on the jagged parts of the cliff, or was it just how the light was hitting the rock, or was it her blood, irrevocably lost to the elements here? The thought comforts her; of her being buried here in the mountains, her essence unified here. It seemed so fitting for the life she had led.

Red blood. On the mountains, swimming around her, soaking her in a burial shroud. Mike are you alright, or when it boiled down to it, did you choose yourself over me? It is okay, I forgive you… God I need to fight, she thinks need to fight against myself, fight fighting but gong nowhere, her brain was becoming colder or was it numb or was it older faster faster speeding towards its final end was that was what death was speeding from youth middle age old age when the body still wanted to be young or was it just a victim of its prison, of its body spilling its blood and the brain in the last minute of life became the mastered… blood spilling without her brain’s consent. No, her mind had screamed as she fell no, I am free young I have plans for me, trips to go on.. Mount Everest to climb I will have that baby that Mike and I joked about, No I can’t fall can’t die too much life left I am only thirty-five this is a joke No Mom Dad Mike I love you No No No No…….the brain said, Nooooooooo………

But she fell anyway. Her body doesn’t care anymore what her mind says. She is here, her blood leaving her for the earth, quiet, it is quiet here, the stillness here flavored with the bitterness of wind bitter end of life……..

She has never really thought about dying, even now as it is really happening. Just living it, this is what she thinks of… living she is warm now even as she tastes her frozen lips……ice falls from the trees upon her, she licks her lips and decides that death tasted sweet like licorice….maybe she was tasting what heaven would be like, though she always thought she’d been living there, high on the mountaintop……. Here, Mt Rainier… would she be part of its explosive lava forever full of life…