By the time the nurses dimmed the lights that evening, I knew it was close. Not hours, perhaps, but not long either.
The way the body whispers when it is finished is unmistakable. Strangely, I wasn't afraid.
All my life, I had lived caught between two forces: duty and desire. The boy who wanted the city lights. The man who quietly stayed.
The husband who found warmth and lost it. The widower who filled decades with silence and wood shavings.
For so long, I thought the ledger of my life was one of failure. I hadn't gone where I dreamed. I hadn't built wealth, legacy, or children.
No one would carry my name on their lips when I was gone. It seemed pitiful, even shameful, when I compared myself to others.
But tonight, alone in this narrow bed, something shifted. For the first time, I realized I had lived for the things that had touched me.
I remembered the taste of summer air and the laughter of children running across fields. I remembered her hand in mine, warm even as her body weakened.
I remembered the little sparrows I carved and the way a child's eyes would brighten holding them.
Small things. Ordinary things. But wasn't that what life truly was? Strings of small moments, bright and fleeting as fireflies? I once thought I had wasted my life because I never broke free and soared toward the horizon.
But maybe, just maybe, it was enough that I stayed. That I endured. That I carved something, however humble, into the world around me.
Regrets only seem large when you hold them too close. Now, in this fading breath, they feel smaller. Not gone. Not erased. But softened, blurred into something I can finally carry without bitterness.
I let my eyes close, listening to the silence of the room. Not the silence of an empty house. Not the silence of grief. But a silence that felt gentle.
For the first time in decades, I did not feel the urge to escape or to look back at what should have been. Instead, I felt the simple truth of what was. And I found I could accept it.
When I die, there will be no children to remember me. No wife waiting in bed beside me. No legacy that stretches across generations.
But perhaps a child somewhere will hold a small wooden bird I carved long ago. Perhaps someone, once a boy like me, still remembers laughter in summer fields. Perhaps that is enough.
Yes. Enough.
For the first time, I whispered to myself, "I am ready."