Nothing is permanent in this world and so with our existence. Our life here is a journey and we are the travellers, furthermore there are different kinds of routes to choose from, for us to take and explore and yet going to only one final destination.
Just comparable to any voyage, our days here on Earth also have its end that may come up to us in the form of death. Together with the word dying is its mysteriousness, thus making it as one of the themes in the works of many authorsThis true fact about our mortality, leads people to have different views about it, thus producing a variety of pieces that have demise as the topic and dealing every aspect of it that has connection to our living. The eagerness to find possible explanation about its oddness enable writers to present departure in different situations that can occur in reality. One universal truth in time is that the passing of generations.
Old group will replace by the younger ones in order to continue proliferation of life, thus producing a cycle where there is a process that happens continually. The author E. B. White has seen the relatedness of this cycle with ones departure.
In his paper entitled “Once More to the Lake” which was included in the book of Di’Yanni, “One Hundred Great Essays” (2007) touched death as part of the sequence. The series start from birth, childhood, maturity and passing away as its last part.The works shows death as a mechanism in order to balance and continue life generation by generations. Together with his son, they went back to the lake where he used to go too with his father when he was a child and while watching his son playing he realizes something. “He pulled his dripping trunks from the line where they had hung all through the shower, and wrung them out. Languidly, and with no thought of going in, I watched him, his hard little body, skinny and bare, saw him wince slightly as he pulled up around his vitals the small, soggy, icy garment.
As he buckled the swollen belt suddenly my groin felt the chill of death” (White, 2007). He recognized that he once a son, now a father and soon will aged and will passed away, thereafter his turn, his son will also experienced the same process and it will repeatedly happen to the next generation. When there is one who lost, someone will replace the position that someone left. With this, the author presented death as part of the natural occurrences in life, furthermore maintaining life process.In “Once More to the Lake” it epitomized dying as the natural part of life and happens in due time, however there are certain situation where death can come all of a sudden, moreover it can be bought by several causes.
The demise can happen to anyone regardless of age, gender, and status in life. This thought is presented in Jane Brox work entitled “Influenza 1918” ( 2007). She exemplified death in another way. The setting is in a situation that really happened in our history which leads to an early loss of people.
The Great War and the wide spread of epidemic along the community is the reason for an untimely death of people in the population. “As September wore on, however, the death notices of victims of the flu began to out-number the casualties of war” (Brox, 2007). It shows that passing away can cause by different conditions in life such as war, accidents, diseases and other elements that has an implications to our survival. It illustrate that human end can come to us without warning.
As a whole, we are all bounded in a cycle that death is the last stage. God put us here for a purpose, moreover to fulfill, be ready and to learn from our experience.He put death as the period of our existence above here, but as a mark of the beginning of our trip beyond to an everlasting life with Him in paradise, thus our passing away is our door to the afterlife with our creator. The sad part of living and yet the only sure thing that will come to each and every one of us is death, only when, where and how it will it approach us is the one uncertain. It may be sooner or later, maybe in a surprising or foreseen way, in a gentle or harsh way, therefore it is imperative for us to be prepared because death will come to all of us.
