The Dying of Mortimer Post

Inglewood, CA, Wednesday November 12th, 2003
Some deaths, I have learned, take longer than others. Mine is such a death; I have been dying it since August 13th, 1967.
It was the height of the Summer of Love, when music was good, and times were bad. Our country was then in the throes of violent change, but the nation’s turmoil had not affected me yet. I was happy beyond words. Then the world stood still for twelve minutes, and when it began revolving again, I was dying a death that would last thirty-six years, three months, and one day. From that day to this.
It was in Ithaca, New York that I began my dying. The road I have followed since has taken me to many terrible places; places I would rather forget. Forgetting, of course, is impossible. That long and arduous road has now brought me to my final destination: the bathroom of a tiny house in Inglewood, California. It was a road I was never meant to travel, but I now know we don’t control our fate, our fate controls us.
I cannot say I am tired of living, for I only really lived for the first seventeen years of my life. Rather, I am tired of dying. I am ready now to be done with it. After all, it has been nearly four decades. Glancing at the clock, I see that it is already past one in the afternoon. The time has come.
Without further rumination, I remove my clothes, lie down in the empty bathtub and place the barrel of my Smith and ¬Wesson Chief’s Special .38 caliber backup revolver in my mouth. I would have preferred to end my life with my actual duty weapon, the same one I was issued in 1974 when I joined the Los Angeles Police Department, but they stripped me of it along with my badge and ID the day before yesterday.
I pull the hammer back, and here I pause for a moment. I have always imagined doing this quickly, without the slightest hesitation, but for some reason I do not. I am but a synapse away from my goal, but here is the brief hesitation upon which I had not planned, eight, or perhaps even ten seconds in duration. They are extremely—immeasurably—significant seconds.
I wonder in this interlude what will become of my things. I suppose everything I have will go to my daughter, Deborah, though I haven’t seen her in thirteen years. I don’t even know if Deborah is married, let alone if she has any children. Perhaps I am a grandfather, as I like to think I am. If that is indeed the case, maybe she will give it all to them, which would make me feel like a good grandfather.
I think of the coming weeks and months, and the significance they would have held for me. I am five days short of my fifty-fourth birthday. In three months, I would have retired from the LAPD after a thirty-year career. They were not very good years, and they certainly did not end well.
I take a final moment to contemplate the last thirty minutes, my last thirty minutes. I picked up the morning Times and saw myself on the front page of the Local News section. That’s what began the final countdown. How old I look in the picture! I’m not really bad looking for a man of nearly fifty-four years. Not at all unlike my father actually, but with a significant paunch which he lacked. I hide it well, I think, at least as seen from a thousand feet up by means of a gyro-controlled telephoto camera mounted in a news helicopter orbiting above my crime scene. I thank God that from this angle nothing below my gunbelt is visible, for even with the dark uniform, the urine stain on the front of my pants would surely be ¬discernable. So there is ¬appreciation for the small things, even in the final moments.
After reading the Times’ humiliating account of my final day of duty, I downed a glass of scotch and sat there for perhaps twenty minutes contemplating my options. Option, to be more specific, for there was really only one. It just took me that long to come to the final conclusion. So I rose steadily to my feet, poured myself another two fingers, and ambled to the bathtub, the altar I’ve chosen to receive my life’s blood.
I’ve been drinking, yes, but I am not drunk. I’ve been drinking for so many years it takes quite a lot to get me really drunk, a condition, I might add, which I despise, and one in which I’m happy to say I rarely find myself.
I have always been a neat person, careful of my appearance and somewhat fastidious about being tidy. Case in point, after stripping for my suicide, I hung my jeans in the closet and deposited the rest of my clothes in the hamper in the tiny bathroom. I admit I briefly considered leaving them in a heap on the floor in a final act of rebellion, but I could not bring myself to do it. I even closed the cheap plastic sliding shower doors—doors that are designed to resemble expensive glass but fall far short of their goal—so there will be less of a mess for some unfortunate soul to clean up.
My ten seconds of reflection are over. It’s time to get on with it. The webbing between my thumb and my index finger tightens on the trigger. As I squeeze, the doorbell rings.
The noise startles me because I have not heard it in months. Nobody ever comes here. If the police department needs me for another interview regarding my internal affairs case, they page me on the cell phone they have issued solely for this purpose. My parents are both dead. I have no siblings, and the last time I heard from my ex-wife was six or seven years ago. I have already mentioned the lack of contact with my daughter. I have no friends, so nobody ever calls me and nobody ever comes over—which is why the sound of the doorbell is so alien to me.
I suppose it is for these reasons that my hands relax their tensing. The trigger does not loosen the hammer with its patiently waiting firing pin. My hand is stayed, not because I have chickened out, but rather due to an intense curiosity as to who might be calling.
Wryly, I think that if it is a salesman or a Jehovah’s Witness, I should inform the errant soul just what his interruption delayed me from doing, but I won’t burden even a stranger with that information. It is no longer in my nature to inflict intentional misery upon any man undeserving of it. Although I have done so many times in the decades since I began my dying, it was never something I was comfortable with. I don’t even like to think of the time when my actions caused pain and suffering to others, not even before I take my own life. Truly, I think, I really was a nice guy. If someone should say at my funeral, “He was a nice guy,” he would neither be exaggerating nor lying.
Slightly irritated at myself for the delay, I get up and throw a robe on to answer the door, and get the shock of what will now be my somewhat extended life.
I would have been far less surprised if God Himself stood on my porch.
It’s called the northern lights…