To exist is to live and die

When I was growing up, I feared many things, and one of those was "death". I thought of it as something that I should not befriend, something that is horrible and dark—a concept I refuse to accept each time it enters my mind.

As I grow older, I see death as an important gift—something beautiful and necessary.

Beautiful because it is a gift symbolized by the image of the blazing swords that kept Adam and Eve from returning to the garden of Eden to spare them from partaking of the fruit of everlasting life. We are all destined to experience the gift of death, both literally and symbolically.

I'd love to live long, but I wouldn't wish to live forever with a body that will eventually deteriorate and will naturally dysfunction due to aging. I wouldn't want to live with wrinkled and sagging skin either. Thus, I would wish to die, and I see death in this light as beautiful.

All the good things that we have done when we leave a place, an event, or an occasion will be remembered because they become memories. Even good things die, but these good things will give life to others.

Necessary because death is the only way to rebirth. We cannot proceed from one stage to another without experiencing the process of dying and living again. Death gives way to new beginnings; it enables us to proceed from one point to the next. Dying happens every minute and every second of our lives. Everything that passes, like time and events, dies. They can never go back. But they give others a chance to experience what it truly means to live.

We have reached this far because death enabled us to freely move to where we are now.

Death is as important as life.

Death should give us the confidence that we could continue on living, because to exist is both to live and to die.