““The heart, it still beats stoically in my ribcage, but it knows its time is up. Strange how the repository of one’s existence is one’s heart, when all the heart does is pump the blood through the body. Not the soul that puts the life force into the body. The soul is intangible, it floats beyond oneself. It returns, pulled back by threads of loves, old and new, of the lives connected with one, of the belief that no, it isn’t time yet. The heart would beat on until the moment it decided it had done quite enough beating for a lifetime. A miracle organ, the heart, constantly beating through sickness, through health, through wakefulness, through sleep, through sorrow so terrible you think it would stop then and there, and through joy so intense you wish it would stop right then to freeze that moment forever. It beats on, regardless. And when it finally does stop, so does the body. Switched off, like a machine, the engine that powered it shuddering to a halt. The life force swirling away into the ethers, wherever it was that life forces went after the body had perished. Right now I am alive. The heart is beating, the soul is still restless, the feeling that there is more to come niggles. What more though, I don’t know.””
