Elevation

by Stephen King

Hands on a clock, numbers on a bathroom scale, weren’t they only ways of trying to measure invisible forces that had visible effects? A feeble effort to corral some greater reality beyond what mere humans thought of as reality?

Why feel bad about what you couldn’t change? Why not embrace it?

I am so glad to be alive on this day, he thought.

the Catholic church and the Methodist one facing off like holy gunslingers,

Everything leads to this, he thought. To this elevation. If it’s how dying feels, everyone should be glad to go.

Scott hung up, thought about what giving things away meant—especially things that were also valued friends—and closed his eyes.

He thought he had discovered one of life’s great truths (and one he could have done without): the only thing harder than saying goodbye to yourself, a pound at a time, was saying goodbye to your friends.

Everyone should have this, he thought, and perhaps, at the end, everyone does. Perhaps in their time of dying, everyone rises.