my mind was triggered back to a book i read when i was younger. a junior or senior in high school, can't remember which. but my memory took me back to a night i spent reading a book that was all too real to me. i remember it vividly; it only took me one night to read the whole book. i sat, holed up in my room, with only my shabby little girly bedside lamp to light the pages. my neck cramped from sitting in one spot too long, my hands got tired of holding the book up to my face. still, i couldn't put it down.
Death Be Not Proud
John Gunther wrote the book in the 40's about his son who died of a brain tumor at the young age of seventeen. every detail in that book, every sadness and every joy, was like someone writing about my house & my family, circa 1980-82. and i thought about that book again tonight. why? do i want to read it again? do i want to remember so intensely again? will it do me good? i don't know. but i know that i am glad that my mind took me back to that place. if only for the one line that i took from that book; that, at age sixteen, i vowed to always live by:
"Live while you live, then die and be done with"
crass sounding, maybe. but something to live by.
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2 comments:
No more "death quizzes" for you!
hahaha, i know ... sounded all dramatic. i was in a "appreciating life" place yesterday. not that i don't appreciate it most days, but it was more of the "we could all go at any time" kind of thing. today, i'm much more carefree feeling. :)
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