Death

Death is ever present.

Death is next door. Death is in the next room.

As I walk down the street, stepping over the puddles, on a raw winter day when the snow is melting, death is beside me.

When I sit down, I can look to my right, and death is there.

The cat comes and sits in my lap and purrs. Does he feel death next to him?

In a house nearby, someone is dying.

I remember my grandmother - she wanted death, she asked for Dr. Kevorkian to come. I told her - I can't kill my Grandma. It's illegal.

The cat kills his prey. One day I looked out the window, and he was running across the grass, holding a mouse in his mouth. One night I heard a strange sound downstairs. The cat ran in, carrying a bat in his mouth.

I'm alive, of course. I'm breathing in and out, I can feel my heart pumping. Sometimes death seems so distant. Death banished by the movements of life.

But in a house nearby, someone I love is dying.