Mirror Dance

Shortly before he died at age eighty-one, Joseph Hansen started a blog called Lastwords. I’d found it once, surfing the ’Net. Three posts filled with the loneliness of having outlived pretty much everyone and everything that mattered. Three posts and about as many replies.
If Hansen was that forsaken at the end, what chance did the rest of us have, especially those who had never quite managed to find someone to share their life? I tried to cheer myself by reflecting that with my heart there was no way I’d make it to eighty anyway. The problem was, I couldn’t imagine feeling much more alone than I did right then.
I blinked. My eyelids felt weighted. How could eyelashes be so heavy? I blinked again. The smart move would be to pull over and nap for five minutes, but I wanted to get home.
My God, it was a long way away. A long, unraveling way that kept rolling, winding through the empty blackness. On and on and on.
Easiest thing in the world to stop fighting sleepiness, to close my eyes for a moment, to let go.
It would be all over in two minutes. Slam. All she wrote. The end. Nobody left with anything to regret or be guilty about because anyone could have an accident on this road.
They probably wouldn’t find the car for days. The trees were so dense down that mountainside. Maybe they’d never find the car.
Wouldn’t it be a kind of relief? No more struggling against the tide. No more dead of night fears about winding up ill and helpless and alone. No more anything.
Gravel spat under the tires. I corrected quickly, instinctively.
As I merged onto the I-210 East heading toward Pasadena, I thought, I wish I’d known about the blog, Joe. I’d have written you.

- Josh Lanyon, The Hell You Say (Adrien English Mystery #3)