Your life is a struggle.
A struggle to return
from your trauma’s darkness
from your primary contradiction
from your fundamental ambivalence.
A struggle to dismantle the terror of death,
to forget the chance of being tortured once again.
Your life is courage.
Courage to accept aging,
the lessening of your strengths,
becoming invisible to the vigorous beauty.
Courage to bend your head-with awareness-
when confronted with the power of the youth.
Courage to raise it again reminding yourself the meaningful experience:
“That death is the only justice
though its manner may be the greatest injustice”.
Your life is prudence.
Prudence to recognize immortality as a stranger.
Another species would be the one that might acquire it.
The twilight of your life
Is the ultimate struggle to preserve the light
that vitalizes a meaningful joy.
P.S. I can still hear my uncle Niko’s voice shouting:
“Please let me die. I don’t want any more. Enough!!”
That was his desperate howl when waking up and realizing that he was still alive.
Fortunately, he passed away two days later.
He was 97 Mays old.
Dimitris Kokkalis
12/6/2024
