2 deaths and an anniversary.. and then God

The uncertainty and fragility of life is really sinking to the pit of my stomach. I feel so weighted.

Uncertainty and fragility are both things you cannot hold in the cup of your hands. They are both things you cannot hold even if you spread your fingers apart as far as possible and tried to grasp or squeeze. Do you know how scary it is when you cannot hold on to something? It's very scary. It's like not being able to reach for a grip when falling off a cliff. It's like losing hold of a 3-month old baby and watching it drop to the floor, it's like not being able to hold an aeroplane down from taking off, it's like not being able to catch someone's breath in your palm and keep it for another day so they'd live longer. It's like a sudden mistake and it's like being out of control. Freak accident.

When we hear that so and so has passed, our trained natural response is, 'oh that's so sad'. And we say that because we know at the back of our minds that it really is sad. Losing a life is not something capable of not being sad about (sorry for the double negative). But do we really know what it feels like? To face the reality of living with a death? I don't know. Does it make it better if it was expected? I don't know either. I think the pain is just different but not necessarily less.

Waiting for a sick person to die is very much like waiting for anything imminent in life to happen. You live in prescience. Maybe you wake up everyday knowing at the back of your mind that this might be the last day with the person, or knowing that the end is drawing near. You do normal everyday things like eat, sleep, work but you keep reminding yourself that one day, soon, the person isn't going to be there to do all these things with you. You think all these thoughts maybe you prepare yourself for the time you know will come. But when it does come, it's like some nightmare came true. Like all those dull antecedent thoughts stored at the back of your head and heart for the rainy day are now realities you actually have to deal with. Isn't that scary?

Having so many deaths surround me at the time he is preparing to leave, leaves me with the very morbid temptation of drawing parallels between the two phenomenon - leaving and dying. Waiting for someone to die, waiting for someone to leave. The thought process is quite the same. The sense of foreboding imminence is the same, albeit less tragic. The element of preparation, of bracing. The rude shock of all you've been contemplating being effected into real life. It is very much the same. And it is a very sadistic parallelism that I really do not want to make. But the idea of death engulfs my mind now and I cannot help myself.

I am afraid that my obsession with being mentally and emotionally prepared for everything bad will be my downfall. It's really quite a rude awakening when all these thoughts you've been storing start to be realized in real life. It's like how when you constantly dream about getting a tad too many Bs in your A levels and the freakish results really happen. It's like. Omg I can't believe this is actually happening, help.

My mind is really my greatest battlefield.

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"Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink;
nor about your body, what you will put on.
Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?
Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns;
yet Your heavenly Father feeds them.
Are you not of more value than they?....

Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven,
Will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

But seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you."

- Matthew 6:25-33

"I will lift my eyes unto to the hills -
From whence comes my help?
My help comes from the Lord
Who made heaven and earth."

- Psalm 121:1

I exalt you Lord, over my thoughts and heart.