In the past two weeks, three things have happened that make me realise our lives hang by the slenderest of threads. My daughter was involved in a car crash that saw her vehicle written off, my Father has to go into hospital for major surgery, and today, in a cruel twist of fate, we learned that Miki's Father (see photo), too, must have major surgery.
All of these things makes me painfully aware of our own mortality, that we are all but a fragile machine let loose in the big bad world, and machines break. It brings into sharp focus the feelings we have for our loved ones, not just those who are suffering the ordeal, but those others close to us. We imagine, against all reason, for a nanosecond, how it would feel if they too were to have a brush with their own mortality, and we shudder.
And yet, my Father, though assuredly worried about his forthcoming operation, seems resigned to the procedure, maintaining his wry humour as the date approaches, and Miki's Father, too, seems to be pervaded by an inner calm that belies his predicament.
Perhaps when you are staring down that barrel, there is a moment of clarity, and these brushes with death actually serve to make us feel exactly the opposite: ALIVE
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