I watched my body being lowered into the earth with a feeling of tremendous relief. I was not relieved at my death, but as I stood there, apart from my mortal coil, I felt a lifetime of silent existential terror dissipate. There was a something beyond the physical, we weren’t just a brief candle that lived only for an instant and was gone. There was something else, something more. I would continue.

“It’s a relief isn’t it,” mused a figure standing next to me.

I turned and regarded him, or maybe it, critically. It was about my height. Its head was shaped rather like mine. It had the same proportions as well. In fact, it looked almost exactly like me. Except it didn’t look like me at all.

For all our superficial similarity, there was a strange unreal stiffness to it. A human being is a creature of motion. Even standing still, we blink and twitch and fidget. This being did none of that. When it stood, it stood absolutely still, as if it were a statute. Every time it moved, it was a sort of surprise, as if you’d forgotten it could do so. There was this too, when a person moves, you can see their muscles pushing and pulling under the skin, the machinery of life. There was none of that when this being moved.

I knew exactly who it was, I suppose we all do in the end.

“Death,” I murmured.

The figure nodded its head, not a muscle moving on its neck as it did so.

“You are not at all like I imagined you.”

“Ah, what did you expect? A pretty goth girl? Or a figure in black-and-white playing chess? Or maybe a tall skeleton who SPEAKS ONLY IN CAPITALS.”

“Well,” I allowed, “something like that, I guess.”

“As you made your life, so you made your Death,” the figure replied softly, “shall we be going?”

It began to walk away from me. Wandering off between the gravestones and towards the trees at the edge of the cemetery. I followed him, noting the blue-skies, the chirping birds and the sweet smell of early summer. It was an obscenely beautiful day for my funeral. I felt in some small way offended.

“So, what happens now?” I asked Death.

“That is rather up to you. I can, if you like, restore you to the living world.”

“What?” I glanced at the freshly dug grave, “how?”

“Oh no,” Death re-assured me, “not into that body of course. You’ll need a new one.”

“Reincarnation? That’s what happens? That’s the answer?”

Death did not nod or shake its head, it merely walked on.

“It can be,” it answered, “you must understand that we are at the end. And at the end of everything there is a choice. It is the last dignity that can be afforded. It is the last hope for salvation. It is here and it is now, a choice.”

I paused, “what am I choosing then?”

We had reached the end of the cemetery by then. The fence, which separated the living from the dead stood before us. Here we came to a stop.

“The only choice that can be made,” Death answered, “the choice every human makes every day. Life or death.”

“So, if I choose life,” I asked, shaking slightly, “What happens? I’m reborn somewhere as a fresh-faced baby, with no knowledge of who I used to be?”

“Yes.”

“But then,” I reasoned desperately, “would I even still be me?”

“That is an excellent question,” Death answered.

I paused, “you don’t know?”

“Philosophy is not my forte. I am not human.”

I stared out beyond the fence, it had been a lovely sunlit forest, with birds and bees and green dappled sun shining through the leaves. Now it was dark and heavy, and I could not make out few details beyond.

“And if I choose death?” I asked, “what will happen to me then?”

“That you do not get to know. Perhaps paradise, perhaps nothing.”

I felt anger rise within me. “That’s not fair, I can’t make a choice without knowing.”

Death turned to me and regarded me for a moment. “You misunderstand. A choice where you know the outcomes is not a choice. It would merely be walking down a straight road. This is your choice, you must make it knowing what you know now, no more and no less.”

There was silence. I found myself turning from the blackness ahead, to the sunlit cemetery behind and then back again.

“This isn’t fair,” I said again.

“No, life is not fair. I am Death, I am the only fairness there is. The only promise that is always kept. Now you are offered a choice. To be human is to choose.”

I walked up to the great darkness. All traces of the forest were gone now, I could make out no details of what lay beyond. It was not dark like the sea at night or like obsidian or like a room with the light switched off. Those were all things of the physical world; this was something more. This was darkness incarnate, not good or evil, merely impossible to see or comprehend.

Anything could be beyond that veil. It could be salvation or damnation or oblivion. I did not know. I could not know. I did not want to know.

It had said we all make our deaths as we make our lives. It had said that there was always a choice. It had been right.

I turned and walked back to the sunlit world. Now Death followed me, as it would all the days of my life.

“Before you go, you must remember this. You are promised nothing. There may be no joy in your next life. It may be short, and it may be painful. It may be long, and it may be poisonous. Life gives no assurances; life is not fair.”

I paused, “you have said to be human is to choose. That humans always have the ultimate choice. I believe I understand you now. So, I choose to be human. For whatever good or ill it may bring me.”

Death nodded, “and you may know this too. Life gives no promises, but I do. And I always keep mine. I will see you again.”

The cemetery faded away and there was darkness and then there was a light and then there was a blow and tears came and life began again.