I Am So Proud of You (Don Hertzfeldt, 2008)

“He pictures himself having trouble breathing and waking to a room full of concerned faces.  He’d been terrified of dying his entire life and as much as he tried not to think about it, death was always in the back of his head, around every corner and hovering on each horizon.  He’d brushed shoulders with death on a few occasions, but in his carefree youth it had almost seemed like an abstract impossible thing to ever happen to him, but with each passing decade, he began to gauge the time he probably had left and by his 40s, what he considered his halfway point at best, he had come to know just one thing, “you will only get older.”  The next thing you know, you’re looking back instead of forward and now at the climax of all those years of worry, sleepless nights, and denials, Bill finally finds himself staring his death in the face, surrounded by people he no longer recognizes and feels no closer attachment to than the thousands of relatives who’d come before, and as the sun continues to set he finally comes to realize the dumb irony in how he’d been waiting for this moment his entire life.  This stupid  awkward moment of death that had invaded and distracted so many days with stress and wasted time.  If only he could travel back and apart some wisdom to his younger self.  If only he could at least tell the young people in this room.  He lifts an arm to speak, but inexplicably says “It smells like dust and moonlight.”“