They say your whole life runs in front of your eyes the moment before you die.
Emigration is a figurative death so in the last days before my departure life starts flashing before my eyes.
It’s not the images that you’d expect. Decades-old random memories flood my mind, stuff I haven’t recalled for ages. Obscure shows that I had visited, songs that were the ‘It’ or a random dude that once gave me a ride. Places, faces, and events that I haven’t recalled in a decade.
‘Tis an immense reservoir showing me that I have already lived a full life. I’ve experienced enough to fill one human life completely. Perhaps that is why I now must die and start a new life.
What is left then? What is to remember?
Let me pick one image from the flooding memories. I am eleven years old sitting in the auditorium of a mega theater. The musical rendition of Count Monte Cristo is on tonight, performed by one of the country’s foremost singers. He is dark and haunted and somehow even at my age, I can feel for him. The story is told and, in one moment, you can see how something cracks inside. Count Monte Christo turns around and sees something else he hasn’t seen up till now, a new perspective, a new meaning of life. He breaks down and sings,
‘I shall leave vengeance to the Gods’.
There is now more to live for.
