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It's strange how quickly your life can change. One second you are reminiscing about your first date with Jacob, the love of your life and the man of your dreams, and the next your body is broken and upside down, and you are trapped in the wreckage that used to be Jacob's car -- and Jacob, the man of your dreams and your fiance, is unresponsive in the driver's seat.

Is this happening? Is this really happening?

"Jacob? J-Jacob? Are you... are you OK? Jacob? Jacob! Answer me!"

The disconnection notice on the dining room table.

The milk spoiling inside your dirty refrigerator.

The doctor's appointment on Tuesday at noon.

And now, the blood trickling from the gash in your arm has ruined your lovely flower print dress.

And never mind the broken teeth clattering inside your mouth.

These responsibilities and cosmetic blemishes are trivial when the realization of death splashes across your mind and floods the senses.

Your left leg is throbbing and your arms are two shattered antenna capable of receiving only one signal -- pain. All is quiet but for the high-pitch tone reverberating in your ears.

Am I losing consciousness? Is this death? Are these my final moments? Here? Tonight?

Through the silent pain and confined chaos of this moment a memory you buried long ago is resurrected and reigns inside your mind. For a few fleeting moments you are still, you are at peace. And you remember October 23, 1995. It was a Monday and you were at Community Hospital to visit your ailing grandmother. While you were in that hospital room your grandmother touched your hand (she was too weak to hold your hand) when she spoke to you. The cancer had ravaged most of her mind, so she was prone to nonsensical ramblings, but as she spoke about the Blizzard of '47, something happened. Her eyes focused onto yours. Her face flushed with blood. And she stopped speaking about the snow and power outages. You remember the feelings: everything got quiet and gravity seemed painted with tension. "I'm so grateful you are here, Melissa. Next to me. Here. God has graced me with 93 years, and even though I'm so thankful for every second of every year, I... I'm not ready to go because... well, no one really knows what's on the other side. I just don't want to die alone... I just want someone there... someone by my side when the lights go out." And then she died. Right there. Right in front of your 15-year-old eyes. Her eyes were locked in some eternal gaze that only she could comprehend.

And now, here in this car on this cold January night, you understand. If you have to die, you don't want to exit this world alone.

"Jacob! If you can hear me, make a noise, move, just please do something!"

Nothing.

You attempt to remove your seat belt but it's futile: your wrists are shattered. And you...

You never thought it would end like this. No, not like this. The essence that is life is slowly crawling away from you, out of reach. And death begins its slow march inward, inside this crumpled heap of metal.

Is this happening? Is this really happening?

Your eyes gaze ahead through the cracked windshield. The car's engine is dead but the headlights -- the lights Jacob brought to life -- are burning and Christ, the beams are bright as the sun and the flakes of snow passing through the beams flash and twinkle and you think to yourself

my god, those are the whitest snowflakes I have ever seen, and those floating frozen diamonds trigger a memory and

you forget about death and dying and life and living and that fucking doctor's appointment on Tuesday and this memory is the most vivid thing you have ever experienced and it's happening again in some capsule that's soaring through the darkest corner of the cosmos and you are

there. With Jacob. And you see him and he isn't broken or bleeding and he's holding your mitten-dressed hand and inside those wondrous blue eyes of his you know it: I'm going to spend the rest of my life with this person. And his breath is a mist climbing from his chapped lips, and he tells you

"I love midnights in February. Snow covers the earth and the ice... the ice traps everything and there's something in the air... it's like a void or a vacuum and everything is still and... I want to kiss you, Melissa."

and there, in that park, you two shared a first kiss. The way the moon light illuminated the snow was magical. There, in that field of angels -- there must have been a thousand snow angels birthed from the tiny limbs of a thousand children -- his lips touched yours and his warm breath felt like a moist fire. And it filled your body with a radiance that could have powered a galaxy of stars. Blooming. Exploding. A splinter of feathers marked on your heart.

And you awake. The cracked windshield. The snow. You. Silent Jacob. And the agonizing stillness of the unknown.

"That night, Jacob, the night of our first kiss, in that park with the snow angels, I... I knew I was going to spend the rest of... the rest of my life with... with you."

Your eyes are locked onto something, an eternal secret that only you can understand. And everything in your vision begins to bleed: the whites bleed into the blues and the reds are absorbed by the greens. And you can hear a sound: someone or something is screaming. The sound soars over the frosted hills and cuts through those bare, cruel trees of January. Perhaps it's an ambulance's siren racing to your rescue. Or maybe it's your grandmother calling your name,

because no one wants to be alone

when the lights go out.

xx