Holy Sh*t Balls

On nights when I do not have to rise-and-shine to an alarm clock the next morning, I allow my mind to wonder and fight off sleep until it is done. Last night, my thoughts were filled with Anne Boleyn. For no particular reason, really. Granted, I do have a mild obsession with her rise and fall, and the barbarically, hedonistic reign that defines Henry VIII's kingdom, but there was something specific my mind latched onto last night: Anne Boleyn's beheading.

In the beginning of the year I finished a book by Alison Weir (The Lady in the Tower) dedicated strictly to Anne Boleyn's fall. A bit of a dry read, I found the subject matter fascinating nonetheless. I, like Ms. Weir, believe that Anne was innocent of the crimes she was found guilty of committing. (I do not think she was hashing a plan to kill Henry with her alleged lovers, nor do I think she slept with her brother. Was Thomas Cromwell behind it all? Absolutely!)

There have been so many actors portraying the Tudors that I think it might sometimes be hard to think of them as real people. My mind cannot help but to think of Anne as a real-life person, with real-life fears, and thinking of her sitting in the Tower of London, knowing her head was to be removed from her body, makes me feel icky inside.

Beheading was considered to be the most compassionate way to do away with someone sentenced to death. When beheading is considered the most humane option to die, there are problems. But these were far from peaceful, friendly times. I guess if I had to choose between being hanged, beheaded, burnt at the stake, or torn into quarters by horses, I might choose the beheading. It's a tough call.

Because the thing about beheadings--and thanks to Ms. Weir I had never thought of it before--is that your brain does not die until all the oxygen is gone. Anne Boleyn's head may have been severed from her body, but her brain could have had a good thirteen or so seconds to wrap itself around what was happening to her. Holy shit balls! It shivers me timbers and makes my core cringe! I think about her head, lying in blood and straw, her eyes open, thinking, 'Well, that's that. There's my body. Here's my head. Fuck. This feels weird.' Thirteen seconds does not sound like a great deal of time, but I bet when it's your last thirteen seconds here, you're stretching it out. It could seem like a lifetime.

I can't stop thinking about what Anne might have felt and thought during the last seconds of her life. But I am grateful that when the bedroom is dark and quiet, and my mind wants to figure something out, that I am thinking of Anne's death and not my own.