I don’t want to leave it to death to decide what passes before my eyes seconds before I die. What if death is a hack editor and decides to cut something together that resembles a film like Weekend With Bernie? Or what if death is a sadist, deciding the last image it shows me is the time I struggled to put an IKEA bookshelf together?

Leaving nothing to chance, I’m putting together a three-minute video of my life. When death is imminent my wife will pick up my all-but-lifeless hand and drop it on the play button.

To the tune of Jim Croce’s “Time In a Bottle,” I’ll start by showing beautiful images of me looking thoughtfully off in the distance. Seamlessly, the film will transition to a moving image of me leading the charge in the delivery room, my hand pointing (like Washington crossing the Delaware) towards my wife’s vagina. (This will have to be cut and pasted since the doctor told me to get something to eat during the delivery. Apparently I looked paler than my wife. So I had a bacon and egg sandwich. It was delicious.) Rack focus to my son on top of my shoulders. (Again, I’ll have to cut and paste the image since I was never able to actually put my son on my shoulders. I wanted to but it really hurt my neck.) Then I’ll do a quick montage of cuts of my sisters, my father, my best friend, a flash frame of my mother (if time allows), a shot of the “Best Character” award I won in camp (I’m pretty sure they gave it to me because I had a great personality, not because I was incapable of winning a sports award), a zoom-in on the number of friends I have on Facebook (over 150!), and finally a poetic montage of me over the years that will stop right before I lost my hair.

It will be a film worthy of an Oscar. In fact, in my will I’ve requested it be entered into the Sundance Film Festival.

I’ve also thought about the last word I should say before my last breath. There’s a lot of pressure that comes with the last word. You have to sum up your whole life. (Writers block is nothing compared to dier’s block.) It’s hard to top Citizen Kane’s “Rosebud.” This may be a bit of a rip-off, but I’m thinking mine will be “Daisy.” People will wonder if I mean my mistress. HA! Nothing could be further from the truth, I’ll think as I look down on everyone from the hospital ceiling. Daisy was my epileptic French poodle.

Life is a hallway. And as we move forward lights are turned off until one day there’s more dark behind us than light ahead. Although I don’t know how many more light switches I have left, the light is definitely getting brighter, which should be perfect for my final close-up.

Larry Silberfein

has one wife, two kids, and an infinite amount of olives in his refrigerator. His stories have appeared in The Monarch Review, The Burrow Press Review, Glimmer Train (honorary mention), Word Riot, and KYSO Flash.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ The Bris and the Brisket, CNF in Issue 1 of KYSO Flash (Fall 2014)

⚡ The Pharmacist’s Daughter, 797-word story in The Monarch Review: Seattle’s Literary and Arts Magazine (9 July 2014)