Why Life, Death and the Number 45?

The search for an answer.

It was a notion that intrigued Mr Pandy. He had a personal interest.

Was there life after death?

He looked at his hands. The veins were shrunken and they reminded him of thin twigs covered by the wrinkled skin of an uncooked chicken.

“You’re getting old. Very old,” he said to himself quietly.

He had been thinking a lot about his mortality. In fact, it had become something of an obsession; the meaning of life, death and what came afterwards — if anything.

Whenever he had mentioned the subject to his long suffering wife, Ethel, she had accused him of being morbid, silly even and then usually suggested that it was time he cut the lawn to take his mind off things.

The dream……..

But he had become a troubled man since his dream.

It had happened last Saturday night. He had gone to bed at the usual time, about eleven o’clock, read for awhile and then drifted off to sleep.

In his dream, he found himself outside a large, town house. It was Georgian in style with a white, stone portico and a black, panelled door with the number 45 in large, brass plate, lettering.

He had let himself in with a heavy, iron key, Gothic in design, closed the door gently behind him and then slid its top and bottom bolts into position, securing the door against any outside intrusion.

And then he had turned and before him he saw, enveloped in a soft, grey mist, a coffin resting on a black, marble table standing in the centre of the room.

He looked around nervously but he was alone. His eyes were fixed upon the coffin, that final symbol of annihilation for most of us.

Slowly the lid began to rise. Upwards it came, moved by some invisible hand.

He remembered being quite calm in his dream. There was no fear only an immense curiosity and he had moved forward to get a better view. His steps echoed in the large, empty room. In a moment, he was standing by the open coffin.

He cautiously peered inside.

He saw himself. But instead of an ashen grey corpse, his body appeared to be extremely healthy with a ruddy complexion and a satisfied, happy expression upon its face. He was dressed in his best suit.

The return…….

At this point, the real Mr Pandy had awoken abruptly, puzzled and disconcerted by his nocturnal experience. In the kitchen, he had tried to recount his dream to his wife but she had only half listened as she fed the cat and then disappeared upstairs to make the bed.

“Did it mean anything?” he asked himself.

In fact, he didn’t have long to wait for the answer to be revealed.

The accident…..

It was only several days later that the accident happened. A neighbour witnessed the incident and gave a detailed account to the police.

It was a bright, sunny morning. Ethel was in the front garden, weeding.

The number 45 bus that came down the hill, past their house ever day, suddenly veered off the road. They said it was a brake failure. It ploughed through the low, front garden wall. Ethel was crouched behind it, digging up some dandelions from the border. It was all over in a moment.

Now, every second Sunday, Mr Pandy visits Ethel in the cemetery.

He tidies up around the headstone, brushes aside any dead leaves and then places a fresh bunch of flowers on the grave. Just before he is ready to go back home, he always stands in silence for a moment, remembering.

Then he wonders.

Why?