Life Recall
Edition: First Edition
Publisher: Self Published
Published: 2024
Place of publication: Philippines
Format: Paperback; Hardcover
Number of pages: 216
First sentence: There’s a moment when you know—when you feel—that it’s coming. It’s not like the movies, where everything fades to black in a flash, or the way people tell you your life will flash before your eyes. No. It’s more like a slow, inevitable pull, like the tide rising around your ankles, then your knees, then your chest, until you’re submerged, and the world above you is lost to the depths.
Time stretches, warps, twists. The seconds elongate, and your mind starts to spiral backward, reeling through memories you’d long forgotten. Faces. Places. Moments that you never thought were important. All of them come crashing together in the span of minutes, as if your brain is scrambling to play the most significant parts of your life before the final curtain falls.
And then, in the silence, everything becomes clear. You’re not just looking at memories; you’re feeling them—touching them with a clarity you never had in the moment. The first kiss, the last laugh, the way the sun set over the lake that one summer. Every lost opportunity, every love, every mistake… all of it. Not just the parts that hurt. Not just the parts that made you smile. But all of it. Because it was never just one thing, was it? Not your life, not your story. It was a thousand little things stitched together, a million fragile threads that only make sense in the end.
In those last few minutes, you realize something else: you don’t get to choose which memories stay. There’s no control over it. It’s like your mind has a will of its own, replaying what it wants you to see. Sometimes it’s the people who hurt you, the words that were left unsaid, the roads you should have taken but didn’t. Other times it’s the moments of joy, of love, of pure connection—the little things that, when you think about it, were the most important.
But one thing is certain: you’re not alone. Not in that moment. Not as your heart slows and your breath becomes shallower. It’s like the past and present become a single, breathing thing, and for the first time, you see it all as one. It’s beautiful. It’s painful. And it’s only then, when you’re about to slip away from this world, that you understand what you were always supposed to know.
That the last few minutes? They’re not really the end. They’re the part where you finally get to see your life, the full spectrum, the way it was always meant to be seen: raw, imperfect, and deeply, unfathomably yours.