I’ve been counting down the seconds on the prison’s digital wall clock ever since it hit six minutes, and now I’m down to six seconds left for the Governor to call before the first of three plungers is pushed to begin the process of ending my life. My mother always told me six was my lucky number because I was born on June 6, 1966—6/6/66. All throughout my life, my mother made sure that I followed the “Rules of Six” that she said The Universe had created especially for me, rules that included chewing my food six times before I could swallow; wiping six times after every BM; reciting six times every night before bed the name of the father who died before I was born; kissing my mother six times in the morning before breakfast; saying “I love you” six times whenever I left the house; marrying the sixth person I ever dated, or not marrying at all. Even though following the “Rules of Six” gave me what I believed was a decent life under my mother’s roof—as well as home-cooked meals every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner—, it took me until I was almost sixty and falling in love with the seventh person I ever dated to begin doubting the “Rules of Six” and wonder whose life I was actually living. There was a moment, though, when I doubted my own doubts and thought that there might have been something to the “Rules of Six” after all. When it took exactly six minutes on my Timex for the life to leave my mother’s body the day I laced her evening 7-and-7 with the juice of six death cap mushrooms foraged in our overgrown yard, I shook my head, looked up to The Universe, and said, “Well I’ll be damned.” And now as I watch that red LED clock sit on six for what seems an eternity, I have to admit that what’s flashing before my eyes is not the parade of happy memories the dying are said to witness at the end, but instead an endless series of sixes that add up to one extremely lonely and unlucky life.
