Sunday, February 06, 2005
Shadowkeeper to Isaac
"You never really feel the realities until you have bled profusely, alone, in a cold street. It is then at that moment, when Death looks over you, that you realize what you have lived for.
If you have lived a life of success and riches... then you would sooner curse your misfortune of having a premature end. Your material wealth can only serve you in the world of the living. The only thing that you can purchase in death is a good funeral.
For those who lived life in the service of others, I see them weep in regret. For a life that was never theirs was the only life they led. Their wake may be filled with people and friends but they will honor him with his deeds to them, never deeds for himself. They would bless his soul and send their condolences, but what of him? He who never lived a life his own, save that of others?
For those who dreamed but never realized it, they shout in defiance for a life that wasn't merciful. Everyone has dreams yet the ones I see lived in them and drowned in them as well. They plea for another chance, and perhaps they may learn better and find a new force to make them want to achieve their dreams. But second chances are not always present and one shot was all they had. That one chance, they never achieved, they only dreamed, they never realized. I pity them.
Sometimes, I see a mother. And perhaps this is where I see Death in her coldest. A person who has sacrificed so much for the sake of a family's upbringing, that is real love. To sacrifice ambition and independence, for those dear to her heart. To take away such a life, is sacriligeous to humanity and to take it away so early, is a sin.
Still, some accept her as a gift. That Death was a release. But all of the living spite the end of their days, that notion only makes their end more acceptable. So what awaits them in the other side? A religious man would say salvation, a salvation based on hope and faith. Would they find what they await, or was it all just another human reaction, to believe in something to save themselves, never to aceept that the end is indeed, the end?
Most of all, I see the lone strangers. They wander ways and alleys where no one knew their names. These people followed nothing more than their own will to live. They live to see tomorrow come. They live to embrace the only thing they have. These wanderers walk like shadows or ghosts, they live no man's life, only to themselves. It is therefore honorable for them to have died and had a complete life, or to die early and say they have lived a life solely for them. They are selfish -justifiable- because they wander alone.
But as there are people who end their journeys, there are still those who trek their own, in a path uncertain as the depths of the sea. Life goes on. Those alive would curse, rejoice or say nothing at all but in the end, she will wait for them as I watched them. Their end will all be the same, into the eternal nothingness and the last second of their human lives will define them, whoever they may be."
Shadowkeeper to Isaac
Riding the Lightning
5:01 PM
