Escape Pod Dreams - 57
Created | Updated Feb 19, 2004
The Fear of Living and the Cult of Death
It can happen to anybody, but it usually happens to someone else.
I was reading an autobiography of a very old lady the other day. The fact that she is still surviving could be considered a miracle or a fact of life. What was simply amazing was the list of people that she has survived. Her mother lived almost as long as she has, so no surprise there. Her father died almost fifty years ago. Her husband almost forty. The one died of just plain excess, while the other died for reasons the finest doctors available at the time could not explain. I have, in my short term of 42 years, had a list of people whom I have survived. I do not know what killed half of them, but I have an accumulating sense that some of them might have lived their shorter lives with more usefulness than I have. Since, with my luck, I will survive many more people before I finally topple off this perch, I wonder what it is that God wants me to to do with what I have left. I'm also beginning to have the stinking suspicion that it might not be any of his business, as his track record is beginning to seem a little inconsistent, also.
