The Lights

Let me preface this post with an explanation: I have been reading The Book Thief  and LOVE it! Finally another novel I can become totally immersed in and learn a thing or too also! It's about a German girl living in Nazi Germany and the prose is so fun to read. So how does this offer an explanation for this post? The narrator of the The Book Thief is death itself. Sounds odd but it works out wonderfully in the book. Anyways, I had the opportunity to ponder death from working as a nurse in pediatric oncology. Sometimes it was tough to internalize what was happening at work so I would write my thoughts down.  

The Lights

                Sometimes I look at humans as different lights, each shining to their own intensity. Some are like a low burning ember, steady through the night. Some like a bright intense firework, with a load quick boom burnt out as quickly as ignited. Each is beautiful in its own kind, each tragic in its own kind.  Rhoda was the firework kind.  She made her presence known with a deafening boom. Her light burned your eyes and she was gone as quickly as she came. Her silhouette still burned in your vision as the smoke fell from her existence. She was either loving you or hating you. She threw herself haphazardly in loves path, ending up pregnant at 14. Just as haphazard as she was to life, life was to her. Four months into her pregnancy she found out she had leukemia. Despite the leukemia and the sometimes debilitating treatment she evaded the despair that often comes on cancer’s turf and lived her life as loudly as she wanted. A risk here, a party here, a fight with her boyfriend but always reconciling again. A shout and a curse at me when I made her go on walks, but a tear later, a hug, and the same trust she had in me from the beginning. That is how I remember her. Out of everything she could have died from, she died from her own fire.  She was snuffed out on her own terms with a deafening boom. She died partying. Her heart kept beating furiously until it could beat no more. It’s a shame she died from street drugs, after all the poison we gave her. At least she had her choice, and I think she would be OK with her pick.

                Then there’s the slow embers type. The kind that just never knows when to give up. They start off as a deep steady glow and then a twitch of light here and there, and then a peaceful darkness. I can see them in their beds at the nursing homes I would visit when I was still deciding what type of light I would be. I help on to their embers, and they help onto the fuel I gave them to keep glowing. Their lights would stir when I came in the room. It flickered beautifully as they told me of days when they were strong embers. At first I wondered why they didn’t just let go. It seemed easier to me. But these lights enjoyed savoring their ember years. They turned those memories over in their minds; they spit them out at anyone who would listen. I remember one in particular. She was quite the flickering coal, growing dark with Alzheimer’s. She sat in her wheelchair in the hallway cursing at me whenever I passed by. That was the flickering part. I think she must have been German by that mouth of hers. She was growing cold but had spark enough to curse. Despite her going cold I felt her warmth once when I sat next to her. Instead of a flicker of curses I received the warm embrace of her hand and a “I love you.” It was then that I came to understand why these lights hang on for so long…..love……and they want to keep giving it.