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Fragile Life (a novel extract) - by Laura Wells
Each minute of my life with Chris was full of him, I drifted in a world infused with his presence; it renders me incapable of accepting it does not contain him now. The fortitude of our wills combined in a common goal, paying homage to the power of faith, does not subside easily and I had invested in it so heavily I still feel the sting of disbelief. It is something ridiculous that he should be dead. Like someone telling me the sun has died.
Don’t get me wrong, it is not the way we approached things that I’m sorry for, but the circumstances that led to the defeat, and the society around us that makes no room for thoughts of death until it comes too close to ignore. It is an interesting idea that life should be the prize and death the suffering. In what other area of life is it this way around? You don’t receive a medal before you’ve run the race; you must make the journey to get to your holiday haven. Not that these precursors to the ‘goal’ could be labelled as suffering (Unless you’re in economy on a long-haul flight with Iberia); the journey is as important as the destination, if not more so. In fact there have been times where I’ve been more excited about a journey than the anticipated pleasure at the end of it. But back to death; if it is so, that work plus work equals pleasure; that if nothing’s ventured nothing’s gained; that you must speculate to accumulate; bait the hook to catch the fish; no pain no gain, why are most of us afraid of dying? (Of course some are not, and not just the ones with direct passes to heaven. But I do think they’re in the minority.) Surely dying should be the light at the end of the tunnel? The trouble is we don’t know to what we are bound. A holiday with a mystery destination would certainly cause apprehension in the hardiest of travellers. Yet, I wonder how many ardent believers in the existence of ‘a better place’ still fear the living idea of dying? - The hours or minutes where you know you will cease to exist in this world in a fairly short period of time. And that the world will move without you. But even that fear is temporary, and once faced, overcome, for there will be nothing left of you to fear with. All fear is temporary, whatever it leads to. It is the length of time over which it exists that could be troublesome, but you can be master of that. You may fear a teacher at school, but, if you haven’t managed to confront the cause, you can be sure they will not be your teacher forever; one day you will probably know even more than they. You may fear an exam, but, if you haven’t done the work that would give you greater confidence, the exam will soon be over anyway, and life will go on. Perhaps this is too simplistic; whatever the future is, it is always the unknown, and within the realms of the unknown bad things can happen. And perhaps that is the mystery misery we fear, yet do not dare look at. And that is what I am sorry for. Being positive about an outcome is, I will always believe, the only way 1 | 2 | 3 NEXT |
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