[Trigger warning: this post deals with death, depressing thought, child suffering.]
Memento Mori
I imagine I’m dying.
Neither is this idle speculation, nor is it a device or ruse for fiction. I’ve slogged my way up this unattractive hill for six decades and the air around here is getting a little thin.
These ghosts… pull at my shirt, lean in on me. They are joined by every small failure I ever had…
This death I imagine is not illusory, or simile or metaphor. I might die. Let us be serious for a few minutes and stare deeply at the scene of the crime. Life is terminal, it will get you in the end. There we go – I can’t keep up the stare for long without trying to be funny, a wisecracker, a smartass. But comedy is serious business, most people get that. And serious business is the root of all comedy.
As a teenager, I loved the sick joke, insert one of your own choice HERE, but maybe life itself is a sick joke? I’m not being edgy here, I’m not 13. Life is insane. It doesn’t make sense, whether you’re a believer or an atheist. Life is at best a puzzle, at worst it’s cruel and unusual punishment meted out on the deserving and undeserving alike. I’m not the first to notice this. Read the Book of Ecclesiastes.
Life showed me its twisted face yesterday when a couple were jailed after killing their baby over 39 days delivering 57 fractures and worse. I teeter over the edge at this news. What cognitive dissonance it invokes.
I imagine I’m dying, but I want to live. If life is a sick joke then death is the punchline. Life is The Theatre of the Absurd and death is silence.
It’s all any writer can hope for…
I imagine I’m dying, but I want to live. So I stare at the abyss. After a short while, panic overcomes me. I turn, try to escape, running up the slope of loose stones that brought me to the edge and my feet slip, my scrabbling hands are cut by the gravel. I strain but the ghosts pull me back.
These ghosts, of Christmas Past and Christmas Yet To Come, pull at my shirt, lean in on me. They are joined by every small failure I ever had, and every fear I have of what may lie ahead. I struggle or I fall.
So I struggle. I fight. I use it all to battle my way to better ground. And I don’t forget what I saw down there.
I imagine I’m dying, SO, I want to live. I am transformed. What does this mean for me? The abyss is real and I’m reaching for that level ground. I am Ebenezer Scrooge waking on Christmas morning. “What day is this, boy?” I shout. Purpose begins to form in the little grey cells, and a spirit of generosity somehow inhabits me.
So I write, and here we are. I give of my time, because silver and gold have I none. I thank people, encourage them – and this blesses the giver and receiver.
This is my journey, it may not be yours. I only hope there’s a grain of truth in there that you can hold: a seed you can plant, tend, encourage. It’s all any writer can hope for. To you I say —
Memento mori — remember that you have to die.
I imagine I’m dying, so, I want to live.
~Niall, with much love.