When you least expect it, Death reaches out and touches your soul. Tap tap tap. Are you there, Alyssa?
I've felt that light knock before, on a black icy lake, sprawled near a pressure ridge and a dead snowmobile. Just a light brush, but it was enough to made me scream in terror. I've been questioning my own mortality ever since that spring last year, and it's made me more thoughtful, more cautious, less prone to take risks just because I think I can. But yesterday, the pictures and the emotional backlash hit so very hard.
Are you afraid of death? I used to think I wasn't. I used to be firmly certain that I might be scared of dying painfully, or frighteningly, or--my worst nightmare--losing my life in a pathetically feeble attempt to save somebody I love; but that the concept of death itself didn't faze me.
I was wrong. Oh, was I wrong. I saw more death on that video clip yesterday than I ever have before, and it shook me. It's ugly, I never realized how ugly, but more than that it's just wrong. As if gravity suddenly reversed but everything still looks upright. We aren't supposed to die like that. Nobody is supposed to die like that.
I almost made it through, until the flashlight-lit picture of the twisted pieces of what used to be a blue-eyed girl. Her eyes were so very, very blue as they stared through the dark into the camera, at an impossible angle to her body. I could feel myself inwardly hyperventiliating and came closer to passing out than I ever have in my life (except for the time in surgery dad cut that lady's tendon and it sounded like celery crunching. That was pretty bad). I guess the only reason I didn't was because I felt it coming. You've got to be kidding, I thought in disbelief, there's no way I'm melting into a puddle in the middle of convocation. I don't mind blood--not even hunting--so I figure it was just my mind telling me that it'd had enough. And in a way I welcomed it because it let me know that I've not been dulled into insensitivity just yet.
Death is the antithesis of all my God created us to be, and the innate wrongness of it frightens the living daylights outta me. I wish I could say I had a long chat with God about all of this, and that now I could look death in the face and cackle, or something equally brave and perhaps a little more dignified. I can't. Yet even though my heart still hurts, my head thankfully knows that God takes away the sting. The victory is only temporary, and if I do have to answer the tap tap tap someday, well, that'll be ok. Can't say I'm not afraid, but that's ok too. Jesus did it first.
Remember how the evil dude in the Mummy scrawled "Death is only the beginning" on the inside of his sarcophagus? He might have been an ugly son, but he was right. This life is short but there's an eternity after this, and there's nothing ugly about it. Too hoo! say the Narnian owls.
1 comment:
Those owls... Mercy, that video was rough. I'm glad for you that you had such reflective thoughts afterward. Mine were more like, "Gross. Those people are dead. For real." And I tried to ignore it because I don't think I wanted to face the kinds of thoughts you seem to have had. I did write in my journal the other day to the people who might read it once I'm dead. It felt like it could happen any time. Hopefully it won't.
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