Shadows On The Wall will be on hold for a while…

Why do we all have to die…?

“I wish I need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.

Of all those dying people I ever met, there was seldom anybody talking about their regrets in life.

More or less by accident did Australian farmers’ daughter, Bronnie Ware, spend several years caring for people who were terminally ill and expected to die soon.

It’s the end of August and outside at my boyfriend’s in France the sun is still bright and warm. I have to keep the dark blue curtain of the window in my study closed to read the screen in front of me.

The Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, being terrified of death most of his life, was probably not the only one with such an all-consuming fear.

When Tolstoy came to face death, he agonized: What will become of my whole life…? Does it have any meaning that the inevitable death awaiting me will not destroy…?

A few days ago, lying awake in the middle of the night, I couldn’t stop thinking about death. It started with my dad who died from cancer during my first years at college; it ended with the coronavirus. Of course; everything seems to revolve around the pandemic these days.

The coronavirus has raged on. Within a few months, the epidemic has extended to all corners of the globe and a third of the world has been under some form of lockdown.