Ally Condie

For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey between footsteps makes up our lives.

All of the things that were shown in early studies to be good for longevity__appy marriages, healthy bodies__re ours to have. We live long,good lives. We die on our eightieth birthdays, surrounded by our families, before dementia sets in. Cancer, heart disease, and most debilitatingillnesses are almost entirely eradicated. This is as close to perfect as any society has ever managed to get.

I'll go over again and again until I've finally crossed to where he is

The pain wants to eat me away. I wish I could have one without the other, but that's the problem with being alive. You don't usually get to choose the measure of suffering or the degree of joy you have.

We need you.""I'm sorry, but I can't let that keep me here anymore.

Inside me are the real things that give me strength__y thoughts, the small stones of my own choosing. They tumble in my mind, some polished from frequent turning, some new and rough, some that cut.

It is strange how we hold on to the pieces of the past while we wait for our futures.

I draw in a ragged breath, the kind you take when the pain is too deep to cry, when you can't cry because all you are is pain, and if you let some of it out, you might cease to exist. I want to do something to make this better, even though I know that nothing can change the fact of my father gone and under ground.

Nothing is really lost as long as you remember it

You always have something left to lose. Until, of course, you die.

Because I feel no anger toward my mother. Only loss, and loss is a feeling you can__ fight your way out of as easily.

Sometimes you can't speak, not because others won't let you, but because you are afraid of what you'll say.

I can trust in my parents' love. And it strikes me that is a big thing to trust, a big thing to have had, no matter what else happens.

They both have in common their conviction that they are still learning, still growing, when in fact they have long ago lost that ability.

For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey between footsteps makes up our lives

At first, that's who I was. I wanted to know more about this boy who lives among us, but who never truly speaks... But now I feel like finding out about him is one of the ways I found out about myself. I did not expect to love his words. I did no expect to find myself in the.

She's right. We would compose poems about love and tell stories that have been heard in some form before. But it would be our first time feeling and telling.

Writing, painting, singing--it cannot stop everything. Cannot halt death in its tracks. But perhaps it can make the pause between death's footsteps sound and look and feel beautiful, can make the space of waiting a place where you can linger without as much fear. For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives.