When I was 14 or so, in grade 9, our teacher, Brother Robert (Canadian brother/teacher of English and Drama) got us to write regularly in a journal. Two stories a week, plus a longer one every two weeks. I still have mine somewhere. I loved it. I was an avid reader of books and comics from an early age and enjoyed trying my hand at creating some fiction of my own.
When I showed it to my parents one day, they called me in for a talk. "Why are so many of the stories about death?", was the concern. I had no answer. I hadn't realised that it was featuring so blatantly.
I know now that it was just a fascination with a very powerful and foreboding aspect to living. I was grappling with making peace with the concept by facing it front on. Plus, as mentioned in earlier posts, I had already experienced two near-death encounters - one at nine and a half and one at eleven.
These days, now in my fifties, death is nearer, obviously. At least on a chronological inevitability level. I have eluded it a few more times since my teens. I still have a relationship with it in my mind. I don't fear it per say, but, like most I am happy to delay meeting up with it for as long as possible. And in the meantime, while I am still here, I will continue to mull over it and symbolically represent it in my art and writing.