A Sequel

1:23 am Christmas Morning. Snowing heavily. I can;t sleep. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say, I am afraid to sleep.

This fear has tormented me every since I was a little girl and learned the so-called "Children's Prayer:"

Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
If I should die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

This verse always set me off thinking about dying, of course. And at six or seven as now, having some undefinable and unknowable Lord take my soul did not seem adequate compensation for a life cut short. So I would lie in bed in terror that I would die before waking and wondering about death. I was a morbid child as I am a somewhat morbid adult.

I have never lost anyone close to me but I have known many people whose lives have been cut short in various ways. Some just lay down and never woke up again. This is the kind of death that scares me most. The idea this could happen. Without warning .

So it is Christmas morning and I am afraid to lie down beside my snoring husband and go to sleep.

There are things I want to do yet. Small things, but things all the same. I want to watch the movies we rented for the holiday. I want to finish the book a friend in Liverpool was kind enough to send me. I want to learn, one day, to play the Irish flute well. I want to eat a real cheeseburger again, not a weight watchers' substitute. As I said, little things. Not earth shaking things. Not things of consequence. Perhaps some people would even say selfish things. But does that justify the possibility of death? Nothing does.

Yet we all die. I'm having a hard time with that concept and thinking about it a lot, as this blog and my last show. I guess many people never think about it or console themselves with religion but I don;t seem able to do either. Maybe because I've never lost someone close to me I fear it all the more. But then, not many people are clsoe to me, so why shouldn;t I fear it? If you have 20 friends losing one doesn;t make much of a dent. If you have 2, losing one is half the world.

Maybe that was crass, but it's verging on two in the morning now.

I really need to sleep but I am still afraid.