A Morbid Love Letter

O how I love you, my child, with a love that yanks the rhythmic beating of my heart, pumping a bitter taste into my mouth. I do not want to leave you, the Lord knows. And I fight back my wrinkled tears for my love is feeble and useless to fight our Enemy, who, now, is knocking at the door of my Life.

You can see, child, Death is coming. Ever insatiable, ever ravenous, ever unappeasable, ever yawning, it seeks to gobble us all into its endless abyss. It seeks to gather me now as my days run out like sink-water down a perfect drain. Would I that it were clogged!

So my heart breaks when I see you live like it is not coming. Yet I understand. I also was the same when I was full of Life. But I see now that it is a mystery. Why do we live like Death is not for us? Like Death is discriminatory? Would I that it were! Maybe we would then have been some of the lucky ones, you and I, my child...

But... Death is incapable of discrimination.

This I know, child. Only One is eternal. Yet Death, not eternal, sometime ago, became the voracious second everlasting. And Life which was eternal and stronger became weak and subject to Death, and Death, which was not eternal, became stronger. But, as you know, the Life came and conquered back what it had lost and Death which had ruled for four seasons, became, once more, weak.

But not yet for you and I and everyone above the soil, as those below the soil give testimony.

Only the Dead know Death; yet the Dead know nothing. Death knows all, Living and Dead. The Living don’t know Death. And the Dead cannot tell the Living what Death is; they keep the secret close like old women with full skirts. And in all this, Death keeps laughing and ravishing the Living. Would I that the Dead could speak! Would I that the adage ‘there is no secret under the sun’ be true in this case!

I am rambling, forgive me.

Hope lives! Because the Life conquered Death and though Death keeps laughing and ravishing the Living, its smile, I see, is stained with a desperation that is maniacal and fraught with anxiety. See how it reaps from the Earth in multitudes with an ever increasing voracious speed? Remember the days when it used to reap with leisure? See what I mean? It moves East to West with haste like a newly rich man flaunting his useless property. It now reaps and harvests the Living like a man eats when he has not had food for forty days and nights. As if there is no tomorrow! As if it knows someone is about to tell it, ‘Enough! Your time is up.’!

And that is why, my child, my grief flows like birth-water. It gushes out of the pores in my eyes. Death reaps! Yet you live like it pre-selected you for exclusion. Why are you so besotted with that which did not defeat Death? Yet, I know your deepest, most coveted desire because it is also my deepest, most coveted desire and the deepest, most coveted desire of all men born of woman. It unites us all, transcending creed and colour, class and country.

Immortality!

Life is eternal; it was meant to be. But the awful, unfair truth since the Decision is that we have to choose it. I mean, like there is a choice at all there! Who wouldn’t want to choose it? Yet wonder of all wonders, we are not choosing it! That is the only thing I have seen in this world that does not make sense. And you are not choosing it!

I saw a man, thirty years old, take Life like he owns it. The audacity of it! Did he know how precious and priceless it is? He took it without batting an eyelid and then sat down to eat and fill his belly. When Death comes for him, who will he turn to? Yet he and you are no different. You both think you are special, not death material.

My child, you know what you have to do in this Life. You know how to live. That much I have taught you, however else I may have failed you.

Life is eternal. It is impossible for Life to end. The source of Life is inexhaustible. Nothing, not even Death, has been able or will be able to extinguish it. Life is powerful, my child, so powerful it grows out of our dead bodies as they rot in the ground. And your Life, my child, is eternal. As Achilles told his fellow soldiers when they sighted Troy, ‘Immortality...Take It! It’s yours.’ So you must do the same. You have been invited to do so.

I accepted the invitation even as Death comes to claim me and put me into the ground to rot and become dust and food for Life to thrive on. Yes, soon I will sleep like a new-born baby; a sweet, peaceful, deep sleep, free of dreams and fears and thoughts and when I open my eyes, the Life will be smiling radiantly at me.

And I will smile back with my full throttle body armour of impenetrable and incorruptible Life throbbing in my veins and my blood will flow with zest and enthusiasm, happy to be coursing through passageways where Sin no longer exists. And my heart will beat to the rhythm of the heavens and my lungs will inhale the clean, pure air of the cosmos. And my mind will fire up with the keenest clarity of comprehension and wisdom. My limbs will throb with passion and power. And my soul will be filled with the fullest joy and the sweetest sensations of happiness, spotlessness and purity. I will discover new delightful levels of contentment as I walk beside Him to the swishing swords guarding the Tree of Life, which will have been stilled, to pluck its fruit and eat of it and be filled with more Life in abundance and power; Life that will be impossible to extinguish forevermore.

I am rambling once again. Forgive me, my child. I only want you to see that I welcome this. I die to live. Forever. Do the same. Come to me, my child, where I go. You were ordained to be mine forever from the foundation of the Earth; and mine you will be forever. Whether you will be by my side or not, you are mine. He decreed; so it must be.

So do not break my heart. Come.

Your loving Mother.