Wednesday, 13 June 2012

• Reflections on a Life Lost

  It seems strange that though I didn't know you very well, I miss you.

  "I am fading away. Slowly but surely. Like the sailor who watches his home shore gradually disappear, I watch my past recede. My old life still burns within me, but more and more of it is reduced to the ashes of memory."[1]
  
  Life is so short, any moment we could be taken away. I have that feeling everytime I drive a car. Providence it is surely, that when we drive that people would stay on the right side of the road. Any moment, one moment of indiscretion, one moment of distraction and we would be powerless to stop our cars crashing together in an accordion of metal. There is something of a foolish illusion of power as we go through this world, that is taken away swiftly in a flash. 

  Reading the newspaper report, it's strange to read someone's name that I know. Scanning through the names, you would never think you would recognise any, that none of them would have faces you would recognise. I really had stopped reading the newspaper for this reason, it's vagueness infuriated me. The solemnity in which it reported soldier's deaths for a pointless cause, or murders of an innocent passerby--it seemed all grievous because of it's distance to me. They seem to always be the people you don't know--old people who perish in the newspaper obituaries column, or a foreign leaders assassinated.

  No one that I have any emotional connection to. It's entirely different when it's someone that you know, someone that has affected you in some way. The feeling of immortality and youth suddenly drains from your face, as water wrung from a wet sponge. 
  
  

  It fears me to think that you'll never get married, you'll never have children, you'll never grow old. It's something I take for granted, that life will pan out predictably--I will grow older, life will change and evolve. Alexis will never change the world. But Alexis was brought to a grinding halt--this just seems inconceivable to me. It seems almost unfair to happen to some of the most loving people I know to just remain in stasis, as the people around you grow older like a silent ghost. What will become of you, as invisibility set in and you are powerless to change anything in this world? It terrifies me. Fear has never been a greater motivator that for every moment we live, we are getting closer and closer to the other side. One less breath in our lungs to change things before regret, and one less breath to breathe the Holy Spirit into our souls.

  We don't know which night will be our last, or which train ride, which car ride, which balloon ride even. But daily, we take these risks, whether conscious or not of God's providence. Yet, I feel what is of even greater risk is the risk of love. I feel so often we have so much love left in our hearts that needs to be poured out. 

  And He surely will be our guide within this dark world.

  If it takes death to bring us together, surely Christ shall be the glue that holds the Church together in troubled times.
  
  [1] The Diving Bell and The Butterfly
  

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