A bell tolled in the distance. Through pain and exhaustion, dread and despair I heard a bell. It was long ago and many of the details have faded from my memory - keeping pace with my dissolving spirit. But I remember the bell. I expect the final remnant of consciousness, my last rational thought will be of that bell.

My name was Jeremiah. I say was because my hold on that identity is as tenuous as my hold on existence itself. I left no wife, no children to mourn my passing. My life was taken too soon, ended by a rifle bullet fired into my chest at close range by a German soldier no older than myself.

I fell, first to my knees and then onto my side, into the cold French mud. For a time my pain was intense, and anger and frustration turned the world as red as the blood that soaked my uniform. Gradually, as my life force flowed into the soil, pain eased, crimson rage was replaced with blinding light and panic left me. The sound of artillery fire and shouted orders was gone. My world grew silent save for the mournful tolling of a single bell.

It was then that I saw him walking toward me. Even at a distance I knew that he was no ordinary being. His appearance filled me with both wonder and dread and my newly found serenity vanished. I wanted to flee, but my legs would not support me. I tried to call for help but had no voice. I wanted to look away but was compelled to stare into his eyes. I knew him, though I had never seen him before. His aspect constantly changed, and I watched him become myself at all stages of my life. He was myself. He was every man. He was Death.

He took my hand and pulled me up out of the mud. I recoiled from his touch, but he held me firmly. “It is time, Jeremiah. Come.” His words flowed from the depths of his diaphragm, harsh yet mesmerizing.

“Am I dead, then?” I asked.

“There are different stages of death, Jeremiah,” he said. “You have suffered the first. The separation from the body.”

He turned to leave me. “Wait,” I pleaded. “What am I supposed to do? Where am I supposed to go?”

“Go where you please, Jeremiah. Imagine a place and you will be taken there. I have no time to spend with you. I have much work to do this night.”

“You can’t just leave me like this.” My panic and disorientation was growing.

“Did you hear the bell?”

“Yes,” I replied

“The bell announces my coming. When you hear it again, I will return.” And with that, he dissolved into a mist and was gone.

I had never felt so helpless or so alone. I was conscious yet had no substance. I tried to return to my body. Was that poor, broken creature still me? Then I noticed the others. So many others lying twisted and silent. Where were their spirits? Maybe one of them would know what to do.

“My God, where are they? Am I alone?” I cried. As soon as I asked for my comrades in arms my perception altered, and I was able to see them. Some were wandering aimlessly, as lost as myself. Others were hovering over their bodies, weeping. A few were moving away from the battlefield, purposefully, strongly.

How is this possible, I thought. Where was the Heaven of my Sunday School teachers? The promise that had so comforted my Grandmother during her long final illness. Imagine a place and you will be taken there. That’s what Death had told me. So I put Heaven firmly in my mind and waited for a vision of silver and gold to open before my eyes, for my Nana to stand before me with arms open wide, ready to enfold me.

What appeared was my hometown. Familiar streets and houses, the smell of fresh bread from Johnson’s Bakery, old Mr. Parker and his horse Sara delivering milk and butter and cheese from Kendall’s Dairy. I flew to my house and arrived just as my father was hurrying down the front walk toward the street. He always lingered just a little too long over his breakfast and had to rush to open the hardware store where he had worked for nearly twenty years precisely at 8:00 o’clock.

I thought myself inside the house. My mother was alone in the kitchen, clearing the breakfast dishes off of the table. I tried to touch her, to speak to her. She had no awareness of my presence. I wandered through the house, savoring every chair, every table, every photograph, trinket and vase.

Finally I made my way to the room I shared with my younger brother Samuel. All of my things were exactly where I had left them. Samuel was putting on his overcoat, picking up his schoolbooks.

“Here! Look at me; touch me. Samuel, it’s Jeremiah.” He was as oblivious to my presence as my mother had been. I could see them, smell them, hear them. I ran back to the kitchen and threw myself at my mother’s feet, wrapping my arms around her legs. “Mother, it’s me. I’m here.” I sobbed. “Please, know that I’m here.” She moved through me as easily as a hand moves through air.

I knew what I would do. Even if my family had no sense of my presence, I would stay there, in familiar surroundings. If this is what it meant to be a ghost and to haunt a house, then it was a fate I accepted. If this was Heaven, then the battlefield I had just left was surely Hell, and I had already served my time.

I remained there for a day, maybe two. It was frustrating not being able to communicate with my family, but I was determined to stay. At least for a time. Until I had recuperated from the shock of my final experience. Then I would ask those universal questions that we are all so eager to ask yet whose answers we are so unwilling to accept when they contradict our programmed beliefs and unfounded hopes.

It was sometime during my second day home when I heard the bell again and once more saw Death approach. “Why have you come?” I asked. “I don’t need you anymore. Go away and leave me in peace.”

“You can’t stay here, Jeremiah. You have to come with me.” He took me by the arm, and I was transported back to France, to a field crisscrossed with open graves. Soldiers and local villagers were bringing shrouded bodies to occupy the graves. Each bundle was placed tenderly into the earth. My company’s harried chaplain stood at each gravesite to say a prayer then moved on while village men followed behind to fill in the graves.

I saw through the shrouds to the twisted forms inside. “Where am I? Which one is me?” As soon as the question escaped my lips I saw a figure being lowered into the ground. My uniform was caked with mud and dried blood. My face was purple and swollen and my tongue protruded through clinched teeth. I remembered the loving way in which my Nana had been laid out after her death, the beautiful flowers, and the horse-drawn hearse.

Sensing my distress Death placed his hand on my shoulder and said, “There isn’t time for anything more. There were too many of you.”

I turned away from the horror of it all. “Take me back to my hometown, now.” I pleaded. “This is more than I can bear.”

“That isn’t possible. The first death is a short one, Jeremiah,” Death told me. “Between the time your essence leaves your body and your burial you are allowed to remain upon the earth. Now it is time for you to leave.”

“Then I am truly dead now?” I asked.

“You have entered the second stage of death, the separation from the living. It will be of longer duration. Come.”

Once again Death took my arm, but this time we moved into a different realm. The journey was terrifying and without his firm grip upon my arm I would have perished. Ghastly, hideous creatures called out to me, reached for me, tried to draw me to them. Some were so terrible I couldn’t bear to look at them. Others were so beautiful I couldn’t turn away.

“What are they?” I cried.

“They are the souls of murderers and rapists, oppressors and liars, pimps and thieves. Don’t acknowledge them, Jeremiah. As in life, evil cannot take you. You must give yourself to it.”

Their cries were pitiful and haunting and moved through me like a physical presence. “What will happen to them? Are they without hope?”

“Hope is for the living, Jeremiah. We choose our paths. They have chosen theirs.

In spite of my revulsion, I pitied them and wanted to end their suffering. “Will they stay like that forever?” I asked.

“Nothing is forever. Neither life nor death nor torment."

The sounds of their cries grew fainter and fainter until we were again emcompassed in silence. I dared once more to look at our surroundings. We were traveling upon an ordinary road toward what appeared to be a village.

“What of Heaven?” I asked. The place where Death led me was pleasant enough, but it didn’t resemble the pictures of Paradise in Nana's Bible. “Where are the angels, and my Nana?”

“So you think you deserve Heaven, Jeremiah?" His tone was more weary than unkind. "You will have the answers to all of your questions one day," he told me. "Heaven is an illusion. You will eventually find peace. That is all I can offer you. As for your grandmother, each individual has a journey to make. You are in the midst of your journey, and she is in the midst of hers.”

Death turned to leave me once more. “Where are you going?" I asked. "What am I supposed to do now?”

“Now you must wait,” he replied.

“What am I waiting for?” I shouted as he moved away from me.

“Oblivion, Jeremiah. You wait for oblivion. When you hear the bell toll for the third time, I will return for you.”

I have spent nearly ninety years here. In that time I have seen many spirits come and go. I did see my Nana again. Briefly. By then I knew that personal identity is an illusion, but it was comforting nonetheless. She was very close to her third death, as I am now, and came to tell me goodbye. Before my eyes she dissolved and disappeared into the light.

Ninety years of reflection has taught me many things. But it will take ninety times ninety lives to truly reach enlightenment and to find the peace and oblivion that Death promised.

I am eager for Death to return and claim me. I pause often and listen, hoping to hear the great bell that tolls his arrival. The third death will finally free me from all attachments to my former self. The third death is the separation from the memory of the living. Samuel is very old and is near physical death. When he is dead, everyone who loved me in life will be gone from the earth. There will be no one who remembers Jeremiah Harper. Then I will truly be dead. Then I will be forced to begin again.