The days went by slower and slower as each passing moment went on. I so often visited the house that once held many precious childhood memories. The streetlight that once lit up what seemed like my whole world was now broken, glass shattered over the pavement. The pavement that still had a shadow of the chalk that I used to draw the creatures that only lived in my imagination with.

The wooden mailbox, once a freshly painted auburn color, was now a chipped rusty sort of gray. Like the color I had once seen in the puff of smoke my grandfather would so often puff from his pipe. Sometimes, he liked to show off by making various circles that slowly became one with the air around it. Everyone said he did it for the pure greatness of knowing he could do something other people could not. I, for one, as much as I loved my grandfather thought that he did it to make light of the fact that like the smoke he puffed, he was slowly starting to drift off to a place where no one knew of and that was known as death. God, oh how I missed him.

Death, as told by many philosophers was not painful, not overbearing. It did not overtake you, you overtook it and this happened in a very timely and quick fashion. Death was peaceful and kind. It involved no pain other than the very moment oxygen is ever so slightly cut off from your nose to your mouth, and the only thing you can feel is the last beautiful sound of a lonely heartbeat. This however, is like a whisper...soft...mellow...quick...and over before you know it.

The real pain came afterwards, in a place known as the afterlife.