measured_words (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
measured_words) wrote2007-08-01 12:26 pm
measured_words) wrote2007-08-01 12:26 pm
Entry tags:
NDE
My first offering for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
august_writing! I am hoping to finish up Cursed Wreck this go round, as well as put out some more Pieces and Shadows - we'll see!
NDE
“So, Local Woman Takes Record for Oldest Living Person. Are you proud, Mrs Kelley?”
“I’m alive, dear, is what I am.”
She doesn’t look the way you might picture a hundred and twenty four year old woman. She’s sitting on a window seat, morning sunlight pooling around her soft white hair, a quilt pulled across her lap. That’s about as far as you might get. Her face is sharp, her eyes alert and focused – filled with more determination than I’ve ever seen muster by my entire generation. If her eyes were flinty to start with, then the weight of the years has flaked away at them until there is nothing left but the sharpest of points. Her voice isn’t soft or croaking, it’s strong like her eyes. It sounds like iron, and that is what is sitting here before me: iron cloaked in flesh and cotton. She has few laugh lines.
“What’s your secret then?” I ask, trying to lighten the mood with a smile.
“I almost died once. That was enough for me.”
“Really? Near death experience? Tunnel, white light and all that?”
“Oh, yes, dear. The tunnel, the light – the lie.”
“The… lie?”
“I wasn’t so young then. I thought I’d made my peace with the world, that I was ready. I followed that light, all the way to the end. But it wasn’t heaven. The light wasn’t a way out. The light was me: that was all. The closer I approached, the more brightly it reflected off the wall.”
“You mean you couldn’t get through the tunnel?”
“No, young man. I mean it wasn’t a tunnel at all. It was a cave.”
august_writing! I am hoping to finish up Cursed Wreck this go round, as well as put out some more Pieces and Shadows - we'll see!NDE
“So, Local Woman Takes Record for Oldest Living Person. Are you proud, Mrs Kelley?”
“I’m alive, dear, is what I am.”
She doesn’t look the way you might picture a hundred and twenty four year old woman. She’s sitting on a window seat, morning sunlight pooling around her soft white hair, a quilt pulled across her lap. That’s about as far as you might get. Her face is sharp, her eyes alert and focused – filled with more determination than I’ve ever seen muster by my entire generation. If her eyes were flinty to start with, then the weight of the years has flaked away at them until there is nothing left but the sharpest of points. Her voice isn’t soft or croaking, it’s strong like her eyes. It sounds like iron, and that is what is sitting here before me: iron cloaked in flesh and cotton. She has few laugh lines.
“What’s your secret then?” I ask, trying to lighten the mood with a smile.
“I almost died once. That was enough for me.”
“Really? Near death experience? Tunnel, white light and all that?”
“Oh, yes, dear. The tunnel, the light – the lie.”
“The… lie?”
“I wasn’t so young then. I thought I’d made my peace with the world, that I was ready. I followed that light, all the way to the end. But it wasn’t heaven. The light wasn’t a way out. The light was me: that was all. The closer I approached, the more brightly it reflected off the wall.”
“You mean you couldn’t get through the tunnel?”
“No, young man. I mean it wasn’t a tunnel at all. It was a cave.”
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