On Death and Dying
Have you ever had to watch someone you love die before your eyes? To watch as their chest heaves up and down slowly and every breath they take comes out in sporadic wheezes. You sit there and wonder, 'was that their last breath', only to hear them take another one several seconds later. You feel your heart clench, for you know that everyone of those intakes of air hurts more than the previous one. To feel guilt flow through your veins because you selfishly want them to live even though you know that it would be easier and less painful for them just to pass on to the other side. They are hanging onto the last remaining thread of their life for some unknown reason. Maybe they are waiting for a special someone to see them one last time. Or maybe for the chance to be forgiven for something. Whatever the reason is, they take each agonizing breath until they feel they are ready to move on.
I am holding the hand of my loved one going through this now. Except he never knew of my love for him. As I gently brush back his blood matted, platinum blond hair, I curse myself for being too cowardly to tell him. It wouldn't have mattered if he had rejected me, at least he would have known. He would know how watching him is causing me to die a little right along with him.
Muggles say that there are five stages to grieving. I have already been through all five of these stages grieving for my own life. Denial came at the beginning of the war, when I thought that I could actually win. What a fool I was to believe that I, a seventeen year old boy, could actually defeat the dark lord and save the wizarding world and my loved ones. Anger came when my best friends were struck down by the killing curse while I, the pawn, was kept 'safe' at Hogwarts. Bargaining came when I begged Merlin to give me the strength and power to move forward. Depression was when I was huddled over my mentor's dead body with tears streaming from my face. And then there is acceptance. Acceptance has now come to me as I sit here and watch the love I was never meant to have take his last shuddering breaths. My last reason to live is dying and I have accepted the fact that I am not destined to live long past his death.
I watch as his small, pale body shakes violently and I wonder what is his reason for holding on. His parents, frineds and comrades are all dead. There is nothing left for him here.
Knowing that I have not much time left, I draw up the near extinct courage I have left in my body. I lean over his fragile form and place a soft kiss on his lifeless lips. "I love you," I whisper to him. I sit down in my chair by his bed again, taking his hand back into mine and I wait for his next breath to come. It never does.
finis