It’s a love
story that began before Time. Life created and sent us as gifts to Death. He
always accepted her gifts, giving nothing in return but broken hearts. We call him selfish and praise her generosity.
And maybe we are right. He takes and takes, and she never stops giving.
One day,
tired of being cursed and yelled at, hated, Death quit. He stopped accepting
the gifts that Life sent him.
At first, the
world rejoiced. No one had to watch as their loved ones departed before their
time. Mothers triumphed as doctors were proven wrong and their children lived.
Children celebrated the longevity of the parents they were prepared to bury.
Over time
however, the celebrations decreased. People were injured, suffering tremendously
with no escape. The impoverished were starved and dehydrated. Instead of the
release of death, they began to dwindle away, becoming thinner, reduced to nothingness,
and suffered the pain of hunger and thirst as it ate them away without remorse.
Mothers held their children and screamed as they watched them suffer. Men
called out to Death, begging him to take them. After all those years of
arguing, we began to see that he was not the enemy.
Life wept
with her children, for their suffering, for the pain of rejection when Death
would not accept them as her gifts to him. Finally, she convinced him to begin
taking again. Because of her love, he accepted her gifts, because it was the only
way he could show her that he cared. He could not create, he could not give. To
end the suffering of all her children, Life gave all but two of them to Death
and wiped their memories. They called it the new beginning. We call it the
Beginning, believing it all began in that garden.
Having no
memory of those dark days, we have begun to hate Death again. We think we know
more than him, that our technology can beat him. Instead of hating and blaming
him, we should be thanking him. He is the end of our suffering. She is the one
who keeps creating us just to give us away. It would be in our best interest to
thank him and hope that he doesn’t quit again.
