In picturing my death, I imagined myself in the role of audience to my own extinction, something that could never really happen in reality, when I would simply be dead, and hence denied my ultimate wish—namely, to be both dead and alive. ... It was not a question of being or not being. My answer to Hamlet was to be and not to be.
Alain de Botton, Essays in Love, "Suicide," 186-187.
For a while I had regarded death:
How am I still alive if I don't want to live? // What happens if I die young?
Journal entry in Book Four, October 3, 2011
And death had regarded me:
I had a dream last night in which I was going to die—they were trying to kill me. I had two minutes to live and the first thing I did was to fall on my knees and pray. And all the while I was afraid. [The subtext of the dream/reality parallel was that I had wanted to die, yet in the face of having my wish come true I no longer wanted it.] ...
If I die young, will he come to my funeral?
Ibid., October 10, 2011
I had a friend some years back who wanted to learn about death in college. Her name was also Hannah. We were in middle school and she was so mature and profound—and also brave—to want to learn about death.
In life, death is a leitmotif more frequent than life itself.
