Fragments of a Manuscript Discovered in an Abandoned Hospital (part 5)

… I had always looked forward to today, whether with excitement or misgiving I can't now say. But here it was at last. Today I saw the results, after a lifetime of desire and anticipation this miserable piece of flimsy paper was telling me loudly that I had reached nearly the end of it all. The experts were, sadly, sceptical of the exact length of time left to me, but nevertheless the situation being what it was, etc. etc. ad infinitum, there you had it. The hospital gave me a maximum of one to one and a half year life expectancy.

Well I was to be the one who should die a violent but colourful death. I was to die while exploring, or fighting for the cause of the less than unfortunate in this world. I was to add something to our world no matter how insignificant, no matter how small, I was the one who most wanted to be of some serious use in this miserable sack which supports us, God and the powers willing. This dirt from which we come and to which we return. It's not really a case of being afraid of death, I had always felt that the idea of shedding the weight of this mortal form would be only too welcome, the idea of eternal rest only too attractive. But as long as death had some semblance of purpose, some sense of dignity.

To go like this, this gradual but interminable deterioration, it is truly the final desecration of all that one holds sacred about oneself. As a human being one is encouraged, indeed educated to feel one's importance, to believe in the integrity and importance of the individual, in spite of all the injustice, torture, crime and abuse that the vast majority of us go through daily, we still cling desperately to some abstract notion of dignity, some mirage of the existence of the eternal and inalienable rights of the individual. Think about it and you'll have to agree man's only rights are those he can get for himself and those he can hold on to. And after all there is always someone with a sharper knife or a bigger gun than you. So if our rights are so much dependent on our muscle and the goodwill of others, then we each of us stands teetering on the very edge of a deep chasm, with the sole desire to hang on to solid land for as long as possible, even if it means actively throwing everyone else in, for a second's delay of our own end.

I should like to have gone to many places, done many things, seen a multitude of wonders.

I would like to have died of snake bite…