Death – Lost In Time

Death surrounds us every day of our lives, just as life does. It is curious, how we choose to focus on life, more than we do on death. Perhaps it is because we’re alive, and death is simply the opposite. The ultimate enemy. Or perhaps not. When death comes to someone close to us, then it’s like we get hit by a truck because we can’t choose to ignore it. Such a heavy feeling cleaves its way deep into our hearts and nests there for a while, thus settling the period where a person grieves for another.

One day an aunt of mine accompanied my cousin to drop him at school on foot. On her way back home, when crossing a street through the markings on the asphalt, a car ran over her by an estimated of 100 km/h just after circling a roundabout. She flew off, and the first and second impacts plus the momentum that her body suffered, caused her brain to move within her own head. I’m not even counting the physical harm in the rest of her body.

She did not die. Or at least, her body did not die, but what was left was not my aunt at all. I’m not aware of the specifics, but either she was in a complete vegetative state or she was a prisoner inside her own body. There are ways to scan if the brain has activity and from what I understood, there was none.

My aunt spent the last six years confined to a small chamber, linked to machines who kept her alive, supported by my uncle’s great effort. What an inspiration he is to me. Despite the recent troubles in his life, he did his best to raise his son, keep his wife alive at a great monetary cost, and still begin anew in his profession as a mechanic.

Pneumonia finally claimed my aunt’s life. Or whatever was left of it in her crippled and atrophied body, thus remembering everyone who knew her that she was indeed alive, yet she did not live. A verdict was issued long ago, yet judgment was only executed later on. I chose to remember her image as a cheering person, always trying to make me smile while I was a little kid. May my aunt, Fernanda Klut, finally rest in peace.