Politics

I died six months after turning ninety years old. Of meningoencephalitis. In a Military Hospital close to the old quarter, one kilometer from the Zoo and the Casino Campestre park. I left behind a wife, three children, five grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Later on, more great-grandchildren will be born, my wife will die, my children will grow old. Everything at its own pace. In natural and chronological order. 

Everyone thought it was a cold, with all the fevers and shaking, but it was meningo. They saw my wracking shivers and they were scared, but that’s the way colds always are. The body shuts down, the head aches, the temperature rises, the jaw and hands start to shake. 

Since I’m dead I don’t feel a thing; free of sensation, I enjoy the show. My wife, an elderly woman not five feet tall, is sitting at the table when my daughter comes to give her the news that I’ve passed on. My favorite granddaughters, the ones my wife and I raised, are laughing in the spare room. It’s nervous laughter. Laughter that means I can’t believe it. The dogs know I’m here, sitting in the same place as always.