Some of you may know about my paranoia of death, well for those who don’t know I’m telling you now. I’m really quite afraid of dying. That said; recently my school community was rocked by the death of a student. As a senior school we had a rather mournful day, despite the fact that some didn’t know really know the girl who died personally (or the other two people in the accident). This got me thinking about death again (which has been a rather common theme for me… death has inspired quite a few pieces of writing) but more specifically how we respond to it.

From my experiences it’s been based around a simple question. Why. I wan’t to understand the reason for the death, what purpose does it serve (taking this from a Christian perspective)? Its such a bizarre idea that you can see somebody one day and then oh so quickly they can be taken away. One afternoon you could be saying goodbye and then the next day you find out that you will never see that person in this world again.

One other thing that kept sticking in my mind was a piece of poetry I had written on the night of the crash (I wasn’t aware of the events that would occur within 2 or so hours of my writing). This piece of poetry was about death. You see I had the idea in my mind of a pale face of a relatively young woman, serene almost but with one small disturbance a slowly spreading pool of blood (a one line exert “A pale cheek – red blood.” ). It really made me think… I seem to envision all of these dark occurrences but never do I truly realise the full effects of them. If I saw the whole picture every time I wrote a ‘darkish’ piece of writing – I think I’d have to stop.

Anyhow, I do hope that the girls family (and all the other people involved) can find good from this hard time… if we don’t try then it really is a depressing world.