Get your own
 diary at DiaryLand.com! contact me older entries newest entry

2002-03-29 - 7:20 p.m.

I have often thought about my parents passing away. They are both alive at the moment, but I do realize that they will die someday. I am trying to prepare myself for that day, but the more I think about it, the more I realize how much I love them and how dear to me they are. Growing up, they were the only constant thing in my life. We were moving from country to country. Escaping prejudice, war, hunger, and poverty. There were new people and new faces all the time. They were gone just as fast. I have no friends from when I was growing up. No one was my friend like my father, mother and little sister. They are the islands of tranquility in the whirlwind tempest I knew as life. And to think that I am sitting here, hundreds of miles from their reach, sulking at not being near them. To think that they are growing old without me now. To think that one of them might befall some tragedy, of calamity, disease, or fate, and not be there the next second. No goodbyes, no more shared laughter, no more shared sorrows, relfections, joy, tears, love, anger, or commiseration. To have half of my soul ripped from my being simply at the thought, I cannot even contemplate my existence the day when it will come. And yet I think anyway. I think away precious time. Looking for someone to blame for this. Looking for a way out. Wasting precious time that I could be making them proud by becoming somebody, so that they would know their time with me was not in vain. Their suffering was not in vain. Their selfless acts of humanity, leaving their loved ones for me and my sister, knowing that their own fathers and mothers would die without them being there, or ever being able to see them again was not in vain! The triviality of my daily life in comparison to what I put down here in prophetic blatherskite is enough to make me sick from incredulity. What I would give to be a simpleton.

----------------------------------------

Cowards die many times before their deaths.

The valiant never taste of death but once.

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,

It seems to me most strange that men should fear

Seeing that death, a necessary end,

Will come when it will come. --William Shakespeare

----------------------------------------

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills,

For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding,

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Captain! dear father!

This arm beneath your head!

It is some dream that on the deck,

You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,

The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;

Exult O shores, and ring O bells!

But I with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

-- Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

previous - next

about me - read my profile! read other Diar
yLand diaries! recommend my diary to a friend! Get
 your own fun + free diary at DiaryLand.com!