Day 18

After Marie died, Todrick and I spent hours playing “What if…”.

What if… we could travel back in time? What if… we could speak to the dead? What if… we weren’t the last humans on earth?

That was Todrick’s favourite what if. What if, somewhere, a tribe of people was thriving? What if the pollution never reached them? What if they had no idea about the rest of humanity? What if one day they moved beyond the borders of their homeland? What if they repopulated the earth? What if we were not alone?

Sometimes, I think about that what if. I wonder if it’s possible. If, maybe, somewhere, there are families, people brushing hair off sick foreheads, laughing over hot drinks, racing between trees, cooking over fires.

Sometimes it makes me smile. Brings me comfort. Reassures me to think that when I die, our love won’t leave this earth.

Sometimes it makes me cry. Expands my loneliness. I ache to join these hypothetical people. To not be alone.

And sometimes, sometimes the thought scares me. Because what if they did exist? What if they emerged from the safety of their old home to find the world healing? Maybe even healed? Would they recognise the warnings left on the land? The scars of ancient buildings? The landfills swollen with poison? What would they think of us? Would they understand?

Or would they be doomed to repeat our mistakes?

But mostly I remember it isn’t likely. Our ancestors used drones to search out food in the farthest reaches. Waters rose and swallowed lands. Wildernesses filled with nuclear waste. Lush lands reduced to deserts, or craters. Forests burned.

Our ancestors searched for safe harbour. The closest they found was here, in mountains high enough to not be swallowed, but low enough we could climb them. In ancient farmlands and gardens.

It can be fun to play what if. But when the game is over, I am left with only one question.

What if I am the last human on earth?