Veronika

I finally caved and decided to spend a week's worth of fags on another Paulo Coelho book ~ Veronika Decides to Die. It's a must read for me, not only cos it's a PC book, but cos it's gonna be one of the books I will discuss over lunch, 3 months from now with one of my colleague who is also an avid PC fan.

A small book i.e. less than 250 pages, I had to pace myself to not devour in one sitting ~ I sometimes feel that I insult the author's days and months of slaving when I do that. And the ending was one that surprised me. Cos contrary to the title, Veronika doesn't die. In.The.End.

I have just returned home from the wake of someone I did not know. A friend's sister. Someone I have heard spoken off, but never actually met before. A young life, extinguished at the tender age of 27. As I stood there, saying my prayers for the repose of her soul, I observed her mother, sobbing still some 12 hours later from her passing. As a mother, I cannot imagine how it must feel to have to bury one's child. And I tried to think of all the things this young lady had done, and would not do. Simply cos her time had run out.

Not ten days before, I consciously took a handful of valium and washed it down with a full mug of whiskey, then sat down in the darkness of my living room, waiting for the eternal sleep to enfold me in its arms while the telly played my fave series of Grey's Anatomy. And I say consciously cos before I went home that night, I took my kids out, bought them whatever they wanted with what lil money I had left and told them I loved them before I left.

And these two incidents brings me back to my book. For Veronika was a young lassy, who decided that she had nothing left to live for, and decided that she would call it a day. Just. Like. That. No drama, no fuss, no heartache, no pain. Just simply cos life was like that and like that was unbearable.

It was a strange experience ~ to know only my friend in a room full of strangers, and a wooden box. But yet, there is a lesson to be learnt, and it comes in the form of a para extract from page 209:

"Dr Igor pondered the arguyments long and hard and decided that it didn't really matter. She would consider each day a miracle ~ which indeed it is, when you consider the number of unexpected things that could happen in each second of our fragile existences."

I told Ben once that life was too short - that we are already dying as soon as we were born. And his reply to me was simply this "Pray then for me that I may live while I am dying." Maybe I should pray the same for me too.