"I notice, I remember, I empathize. I don't want to. I touch the thought of the strays like it's home base, like they'll be safe if I light them a candle in my mind. If I could notice everything and remember it later; if I could think about it, prayerful, though I don't pray. Then it would all be all right. I just have to see it, know it, learn it, watch after it. And even then. I wind up mourning it.

"When I was about seven or eight, and I first understood the concept of death -- like, this was something that was going to happen to me, and I was going to stop existing -- I was horrified. I was like, are you kidding me? What are we all doing here, running aound in our hairdos, acting like we give a shit about the price of margarine; we're all going to die unless we start working on this problem right now, this death thing. Surely, we could use science to figure out a way to keep this from happening; if nothing else, I would become a scientist, a very smart one, and I would cure death. Just my own, perhaps, but that would be enough for me. I felt sad for all the other people who hadn't yet figured out how important it was to find a way to avoid death, like I was planning to do; they were wasting their lives. The purpose of life was to cure death. This seemed more evident to me than anything."

--Girlbomb

I don't remember when I first understood the concept of death. I was a very self-centered child, mostly because I had a twin brother, so the life revolved not around Me but around Us, and so I constantly strove against him as though my very livelihood depended on being better than him. Death, decay, that slow lapse or sudden end, all of these weren't anything I needed to concern myself with. I looked at a dead bird once, and I thought that it was sad that it didn't have more time. I fried ants with a magnifying glass, and I wondered if they felt fulfillment with the life they had lived. I jumped off roofs and ran around until my wet feet froze, not because I didn't care that I might die, not because I was too stupid to realize the danger of my actions. I just always felt that there was a path in front of me, and I took it. I don't think I'll fear death, because when my time comes, I'll take that path as well.

I've always had issues with this, because while I won't mourn my death, others will, even if I tell them not to. And I don't mourn the death of others, because they are going on to the next book, while I have to finish this one. And I can't stop reading or skip to the end, because that's not how it works. I see the sorrow of others, and I understand in my head that they wish they could see that person again, they think that death has robbed us of them, and them of us. But I see no robber, only a doorway and a guide who opens it before us. And that first day on the other side of that door should be celebrated like one's birthday, like a wedding anniversary, like the birth of a child. The comfort of the womb ends at birth, the single life ends in marriage, the self-centered life ends at children, but we do not mourn these things, for while we enjoyed them, we are glad of our new lives, our new futures. I mourn the suffering of the world, the pain and misery so many cause or endure, the unfairness of it all. But I do not mourn for death.