And then there’s the bigger, more grandiose questions about what will happen when I’m gone. Where am I going? Anywhere? Nowhere? Somewhere? Somewhere good? Will there be tea and squares and laughing and crying and swearing there, because if there isn’t, well then I don’t want to go. Not that I’ll have a choice. When my body is tucked into the earth inside a cozy burial pod, with a tenacious little tree being fuelled by the leftovers of my existence, will the flickers of energy that steered my flesh and bones through the world simply evaporate? Will they too be absorbed by the earth and the tree and the land I loved? Or will my gaudy spirit hitch a ride on the saltwater wind, and swirl away to a place where there’s nothing but golden light and good memories, and the sound of Mama gently whispering, Get your bony arse out of bed, before I kick it out.

When I showed up here, with all my assorted sins and shames neatly packed in a classy bag of big-city smug, the people of this place had every right to drag me by the scruff of my neck down to the fire hall, with an angry mob awaiting to pelt me with lobster shells and fiddle bows and beer caps and various tartans. They could have revoked my Caper Papers on the spot for talking like such a filthy traitor. For making like I was somehow better than everyone and everything here just because I ran away to bury my accent, my fuck-ups, my roots. But they didn’t. Every piece of this place conspired to hold me together, even as I fell apart. To remind me who I am, and why.

Unfortunately, knowing damn well that I was going to die didn’t turn me into some peace-pissing, bliss-barfing, gratitude-grabbing beacon of spiritual guru greatness. Pity. I could have done some good with that. Whipped up some wicked brochures and built one hell of an empire. Maybe turned the whole goddamn island into a world-class New Age spiritual tourist attraction. Oh well. Maybe next life, if believing in such a thing suits me. Which, in the hard moments, it does.

If nothing else, maybe all this brought me to peaceful grips with my life. It made me think and say and do all the stupid, shitty things I thought and said and did, because that’s what people do when they’re living. Even when they’re dying. It made me notice that there are shades of beauty in the strangest places. In the strangest people, too. It made me stop looking for truth, and start seeing meaning.

Lately, that dream I had right before and after I came here — the one with the cackling birds, the hellish land, and the lone tree that would stalk, grab, and trap me — has come back. But it’s different now. I don’t wake up in the middle of it, sick and terrified. That dream doesn’t wake me up at all. And rather than squeeze me to death, the tree just picks me up from the dirt, and holds me tight in the mythic madness of its branches. From so high up, I can see every shimmer and shadow that plays between the water and the sky, and I swear I can hear all the people I’ve ever loved gathering, their voices calling and cawing in riotous tones like a pack of black, beady-eyed birds who’ve stumbled upon some sort of treasure.