How will my life end?

I was lazily surfing the Net, looking for nothing in particular, when a thought struck me like a lightning bolt. I suddenly realized how apathetic and oblivious I am to the horrific suffering this world undergoes day after day.

There's that Andes-rocking earthquake in Peru which entombed hundreds of people under tons of rubble in a span of minutes. And there's the Darfur conflict, whose death toll has been reduced to a mere statistic in the minds of the populace by excessive publicity.

And of course there's that category 5 hurricane (translated: weather monstrosity) which, having just pounded the sandy beaches of Jaimaica a few hours earlier, is about to hit the western coast of Mexico in a few days. (The latter I haven't shaken off my shoulder that easily because there's a slim chance of us getting hit too. :-X)

The point is, every time I draw a breath in, hundreds of people breathe their last, some with a grim death-rattle, others with a quiet sigh. And yet I treat the preciousness of my existence like oxygen -- it's in the air, I desperately need it, yet I don't give much less a thought of gratitude for it.

You know, realizing now that my life is as tenuous as spiderweb thread and can be cut and torn and whisked away from me when I least expect it, makes me a bit nervous. Even though I am a Christian, and have been one for three years already, the uncertainty and fragility of it all still causes a substantial measure of discomfort and unease to well up my bowels.

So I thought about it for a while. The poem below is a half-baked result of my musings.

How will my life end?

Will it be like
the inglorious white-hair fuzz
of a balding dandelion clock,
scattered into the wind by
the soft, steady puffs of old age
with the memories of years long-gone?

Will it be like
a gleaming crystal goblet,
lofty and proud amidst a shelf of medals --
that suddenly shatters in an instant,
amidst choking grunts
and an urgent call for 911 --
due to a tiny blood clot
fatally out-of-place?

Will it be like
an unwitting and docile heifer
about to be slaughtered
in a hell-house of rusted steel blades,
out of whose butcher-stabbed neck
warm blood spurts out and collects
into a bucket of nickels?

Will it be like
a languid morning mist
that slowly vaporizes,
basking under the warm rays
of a rising egg-yolk Sun,
while it humbly whispers,
"You must increase,
and I must decrease?"

Will it be like
a rickety closet door
that opens into a Narnia
of unimaginable and blinding splendor,
ruled by a Lion-King
who welcomes me,
weak-kneed and trembling,
to rest my head on His glorious mane?

I'll never know for sure,
But this I do: that it will end
in the tender hands
of One who promised
"I will never leave you,
I will never forsake you."