WE ARE BORN TO DIE

Beep! Beep! Beeeeep! Those were the sounds of the hospital machines waking me up from a deep sleep. “What is happening? Nurse! Nurse! Nurse!” I shouted as I tried to wake up my friend. “Liz, wake up! Liz! Nurse! Liz, talk to me! Please, Liz, please! Don’t do this Liz, just wake up!”

I kept on shouting still trying to wake her up, with tears rolling down my cheeks. Immediately after the nurses heard me calling, they rushed over to the ward. “Please wait outside, Ma’am”, they said. I unsteadily waited outside, pacing up and down and crying softly. I remember praying softly and begging God to wake her up.

A few minutes later, the nurse who’d told me to wait outside came out to me. “We tried everything we could, but unfortunately she didn’t make it. I’m so sorry for your loss”, she said while going back to where Lizzie was. Immediately after she told me the news, I started crying loudly, fell to my knees. I couldn’t handle the news very well. For some time I was so weak that I sat on the hospital benches helplessly.

Lizzie was my best friend since childhood. Her mother and mine were best friends since their university years, so we easily became best friends in a short period of time. We had a strong bond, inseparable, and even became roommates during our school days.

But one very cold Wednesday evening, Lizzie felt she was coming down with flue. She was getting overly cold and started shivering, yet we were inside our room, and it was warm inside. But as the evening progressed, she started shaking heavily like a person who had been attacked by the worst case of flue. She barely walked, even trying to sit down was an extremely difficult exercise, and so I helped her. I covered her with a blanket and plugged on a heater to keep her warm. I never really thought it was something serious. I just thought it had to do with the cold weather, and placed hope on the flue medicine that she would get better.

As the night went by, she started getting worse. I was also starting to be more worried since I had never seen her like this. I knew her for many years and lived with her for some years at school but nothing like this had ever happened before. I tried calling her parents several times, but they could not pick up. They were asleep since it was late. Without wasting time, I called an ambulance and rushed her to the hospital. Six hours later, she was pronounced dead.

I was shocked, scared and didn’t know what to do, so I called her parents again and this time they picked up the call. Within an hour they were at the hospital. Everybody was sad and weeping. It was a very unbearable moment.

When her parents collected Lizzie’s belongings from the house, they found her diary. Lizzie was so secretive about it. She never wanted anyone to see or read it. When her mother paged it through, she discovered that Lizzie had written about her own death. She wrote her own obituary, her funeral arrangements and how she would love people to do for her to pay their last respects. It was an unusual thing to do and a bit scary. Her parents even believed her death was a curse about what she did and God punished her for it.

Today as I sit and remember her, so many things are running through my mind. It is a fact that sometimes we humans forget that one day we will die, one way or the other. We have lost our loved ones who had already embarked on the journey of death, though we did not comprehend it. I know that as scary as it may sound, we are all born to die. It is wise that people better enjoy their lives while they still can. Make a good thing out of it that when people think about you, they remember someone who contributed in other people’s lives. Remember, you don’t know when, how and where you will die. We are born to die, but until then we must live fully, for ourselves and for others.