A row of white roses, laid to gentle rest on the floor of a city sidewalk. A thousand white roses, a thousand sentinels to guard the memories violently shattered in a single moment. Each rose in lieu of a farewelled life, a silenced dream.

How can they hope to understand? They have not seen with their own eyes the last smile of a girl with the unfulfilled promise of life cut off by the death machine. They have not heard with their own ears the fragmented screams rendering the smoky air. They have not smelled the acrid stench of charred dead. They offer empty public condolences, meaningless words already drying in their rotting mouths, but they cannot understand. The voices of the deceased will linger in the minds of the survivors. Stained eternally with the clammy touch of souls ripped from this world, the survivors are doomed to remember for the rest of time. But they do not know. They will never know.

The tenacity of human spirit belies its cruel impermanency. In a second it is lost, resigned forever to be another mark on the chalkboard of all-powerful death. For life is brief, and happiness but illusion. No matter how much or how little you have accomplished, death will always be the champion at the end of a slow and futile race.

The gift of this world is too precious to waste. Make of it what you can before death’s chilly hand snatches it away.






< Footnote: This is dedicated to the victims of terrorist attacks all over the world, especially to the hundreds of dead and thousands of injured resulting from the devastating bombings in Madrid on March 11. My thoughts and best wishes go to all who have been affected by this atrocity. >

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