Death's Messengers

Van Canna · Post by **Van Canna** » Fri Aug 18, 2000 5:04 am

DEATH'S MESSENGERS
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IN ANCIENT TIMES a giant was once traveling on a great highway, when
suddenly an unknown man sprang up before him, and said, "Halt, not one
step farther!" "What!" cried the giant, "a creature whom I can crush
between my fingers, wants to block my way? Who art thou that thou darest
to speak so boldly?" "I am Death," answered the other. "No one resists
me, and thou also must obey my commands." But the giant refused, and
began to struggle with Death. It was a long, violent battle. At last the
giant got the upper hand, and struck Death down with his fist, so that he
dropped by a stone. The giant went his way, and Death lay there
conquered, and so weak that he could not get up again. "What will be done
now," said he, "if I stay lying here in a corner? No one will die now in
the world, and it will get so full of people that they won't have room to
stand beside each other."

In the meantime a young man came along the road, who was strong and
healthy, singing a song, and glancing around on every side. When he saw
the half-fainting one, he went compassionately to him, raised him up,
poured a strengthening draught out of his flask for him, and waited till
he came round. "Dost thou know," said the stranger, while he was getting
up, "who I am, and who it is whom thou hast helped on his legs again?"
"No," answered the youth, "I do not know thee." "I am Death," said he. "I
spare no one, and can make no exception with thee- but that thou mayst
see that I am grateful, I promise thee that I will not fall on thee
unexpectedly, but will send my messengers to thee before I come and take
thee away." "Well," said the youth, "it is something gained that I shall know when thou comest, and at any rate be safe from thee for so long."

Then he went on his way, and was light-hearted, and enjoyed himself, and
lived without thought. But youth and health did not last long; soon came
sicknesses and sorrows, which tormented him by day, and took away his
rest by night. "Die, I shall not," said he to himself, "for Death will
send his messengers before that, but I do wish these wretched days of
sickness were over."

As soon as he felt himself well again he began once more to live
merrily. Then one day some one tapped him on the shoulder. He looked
round, and Death stood behind him, and said, "Follow me, the hour of thy
departure from this world has come." "What," replied the man, "wilt thou
break thy word? Didst thou not promise me that thou wouldst send thy
messengers to me before coming thyself? I have seen none!" "Silence!"
answered Death.

"Have I not sent one messenger to thee after another? Did
not fever come and smite thee, and shake thee, and cast thee down? Has
dizziness not bewildered thy head? Has not gout twitched thee in all thy
limbs? Did not thine ears sing? Did not tooth-ache bite into thy cheeks?
Was it not dark before thine eyes? And besides all that, has not my own
brother, Sleep, reminded thee every night of me? Didst thou not lie by
night as if thou wert already dead?" The man could make no answer; he
yielded to his fate, and went away with Death.
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Panther · Post by **Panther** » Fri Aug 18, 2000 6:16 pm

Have to agree with Allen-san...

I want to go in my sleep like my Grand-father, not like the passengers in his car.

Jackie Olsen · Post by **Jackie Olsen** » Fri Aug 18, 2000 8:11 pm

Another viewing point:

"I'm not afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens."
-- Woody Allen

We are dying each moment the "little deaths." With each change of self we experience little rebirths until the great death and rebirth into the Great Round ..."

A thought-provoking post, Van ...

Jackie

Allen M. · Post by **Allen M.** » Sat Aug 19, 2000 5:16 am

Your post provides powerful meaning and evokes deep and gnawing thoughts. Death is the first defeat.

So merciful is he when you see not him coming because there was no pain as you are already on your way to the other side by the time you meet him face-to-face.

Then you ask him to go back for because others are not ready for you to leave them.

So he lets you return.

After years go by, and others have become strong, you begin to prepare them as well as you can without letting too much of the cat out of the bag.

Then one day you become afraid again as you see the twilight because they now depend upon you less and less as the time goes by. You know, or at least hope, that you have prepared them well.

[This message has been edited by Allen M. (edited August 18, 2000).]

Allen M. · Post by **Allen M.** » Sat Aug 19, 2000 12:28 pm

Van's post is every bit real. My repost is my story, Panther. Some 20 years ago I walked with the Angel of Death, but also cut a deal with him, probably at the instant prior to ejecting a lungfull of blood in the face of the policeman who was about to administer CPR.

One hundred years from now almost the entire human race living on this earth today will be dead, so for all practical purposes, it will be the end of the world for today's living.

We are all living on borrowed time, so make peace with your own soul on this earth while you can -- and live for today, but a little for tomorrow, because death can come at any time like a thief, and steal you away.

J.D.: Try the lumber yard.

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Allen, Home: http://www.ury2k.com/pulse mirror: http://home.ici.net/~uechi/

Tony-San · Post by **Tony-San** » Sat Aug 19, 2000 9:45 pm

Fred,

Why wait? I hook up with Kanbun every Sunday night on my Ouija Board (at least I think it's Kanbun)!

Tony

Lori · Post by **Lori** » Sat Aug 19, 2000 10:07 pm

Reminds me of something I heard an author speaking about one time... (I cannot remember her name right now) She had written about the death of her daughter - and her feelings and emotions and the terrible year of pain she went through following her loss. The author went through such a dark journey of sorrow, fear, denial, loss, anger, bargaining... and then - almost exactly a year to the day that her daughter died, the author held in her arms, in the exact same room, in much the same body position, her new-born granddaughter. The child entered this world in the same room where her daughter had left - and in that instant - the author was overwhelmed with a sense of sameness of the two events - the birth and the death - all part of the same thing - they WERE the same thing - they were passages from one world to the next - and in that moment all the pain and suffering and agony of that year between events made perfect sense - it was a preparation to appreciate this event in the way she did... it was a beautiful story and I do not do it justice in the re-telling.

Similarly I have heard before that a woman is closest to death when giving birth - that her soul hovers between worlds of life and death as these worlds converge... other events of life could be likened to that moment of juxtaposition, if only we open our eyes to them...

f.Channell · Post by **f.Channell** » Sun Aug 20, 2000 5:21 am

I don't know about the rest of you but I plan on signing up for lessons with Kanbun as soon as I get there. Afterwards I'll enjoy the Jimi Hendrix concert with a few mugs of mead which any viking can tell you flows freely through valhalla. I know i'll miss my loved ones but will wait patiently for them. I may also be worm food, which is why we gotta have a good time now.
"In heaven there is no beer-thats why we drink it here."
Trappist monks of Belgium

Lori · Post by **Lori** » Sun Aug 20, 2000 9:12 pm

Aug. 20, 2000

Father, daughter laid to rest
Family, friends say goodbye during emotional ceremony

By Holly Roberson
FLORIDA TODAY

<blockquote>TITUSVILLE, Fla. - A community still reeling from the brutal deaths of a little girl and her father a week ago gathered by the hundreds Saturday to say goodbye.

Packing New Life Christian Fellowship on Saturday morning, about 500 people, including numerous children and teen-agers, attended the funeral of Virginia Friskey, 10, and her father, Ron Friskey, 53. Before the service, many made the walk up the church's aisle to lay flowers at the base of Virginia's tiny white coffin - nestled next to her father's larger one.

A knife-wielding intruder killed father and daughter in their home Aug. 12 in a violent attack. Police arrested a family friend, Randy Schoenwetter, and charged him with the murders. The 18-year-old is being held without bail in the Brevard County Detention Center in Sharpes.

Another of the Friskeys' daughters, Teresa, 16, hid in a closet during the attack and was not hurt. She attended the funeral with her brother, Chad, an Air Force enlistee who was in Pensacola during the attack. Their mother, Haesun, is still in critical condition at Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne and was unable to attend the funerals.

Senior Pastor Larry Linkous began Saturday's service by thanking the community and law enforcement officials.

"No one has ever seen such a response as this," he said to the crowd, many of them wearing purple ribbons with Virginia's name on them.

"Last Saturday the sun rose on a community that was shaken. By the time the sun set, the man was in custody," Linkous said.

In situations like this, when such a senseless death occurs, he said, survivors search for a reason.

"Through our tears we seek an answer here today," he said. "But there are things we will never understand. The things we do know will heal us."

He spoke of Virginia as a vibrant, delightful child who filled everyone's hearts with joy.

"We know Virginia," he said. "No one can ever take her away from us."

He called Ron Friskey "one of the finest men you'll ever meet."

Linkous told the crowd of mourners there would probably never be an answer as to why the lives of the father and daughter were taken prematurely.

"It's our nature to need a reason," he said. "But finding a reason will never heal your heart. Let's live in what we do know."

After the service, a solemn Teresa and Chad were followed by other relatives outside. A funeral procession several miles long then snaked through Titusville toward Oaklawn Memorial Gardens. As the procession passed, cars in the opposite lane pulled to the shoulder and traffic came to a stop for several minutes.

Under a broiling midday sun, mourners huddled around a green tent where the two caskets were eventually brought to rest. In a brief graveside prayer, Linkous urged the mourners to remember Virginia and Ron Friskey in positive terms.

"They were not swallowed up by death," he said. "They were swallowed up by life."

Following a 21-gun salute in honor of Ron Friskey, who served in the Air Force for 25 years, taps filled the humid air before the crowd dispersed.

As the mourners made their way back to their cars, a little girl stole away from her mother and placed a card amid the graveside flowers. Written in childlike print was the name, Virginia. </blockquote>

No - that kind of thing never happens around here - not in such a small, gentle community of hard-working upper middle-class people - not in my own backyard!

And what would you do if surprised in the middle of the night by a young knife wielding assasin? No rhyme or reason, no obvious predictors - what would you do?

The older sister hid in a closet and dialed 911.

The mother - still in critical condition - may have sacrificed her life in a futile attempt to protect 10 year old Viginia's body with her own.

Death's messengers indeed.

Allen M. · Post by **Allen M.** » Mon Aug 21, 2000 1:07 am

And how quick was it from start to finish? Death comes like a thief when you least expect him.

Van Canna · Post by **Van Canna** » Mon Aug 21, 2000 3:40 am

In Death we have both learned the
propensity of man to define the indefinable. I will not say, then,
commence with the moment of life's cessation- but commence with that sad,
sad instant when, the fever having abandoned you, you sank into a
breathless and motionless torpor, and I pressed down your pallid eyelids
with the passionate fingers of love.

I breathed no longer. The pulses were still. The heart had ceased to
beat. Volition had not departed, but was powerless. The senses were
unusually active, although eccentrically so- assuming often each other's
functions at random. The taste and the smell were inextricably
confounded, and became one sentiment, abnormal and intense. The rosewater
with which your tenderness had moistened my lips to the last, affected me
with sweet fancies of flowers- fantastic flowers, far more lovely than
any of the old Earth, but whose prototypes we have here blooming around
us.

The eyelids, transparent and bloodless, offered no complete
impediment to vision. As volition was in abeyance the balls could not
roll in their sockets- but all objects within the range of the visual
hemisphere were seen with more or less distinctness; the rays which fell
upon the external retina, or into the corner of the eye anterior surface. Yet,
in the former instance, this effect was so far anomalous that I
appreciated it only as sound- sound sweet or discordant as the matters
presenting themselves at my side were light or dark in shade- curved or
angular in outline.

The hearing at the same time, although excited in
degree, was not irregular in action- estimating real sounds with an
extravagance of precision, not less than of sensibility. Touch had
undergone a modification more peculiar. Its impressions were tardily
received, but pertinaciously retained, and resulted always in the highest
physical pleasure.

Thus the pressure of your sweet fingers upon my
eyelids, at first only recognized through vision, at length, long after
their removal, filled my whole being with a sensual delight immeasurable.
I say with a sensual delight. All my perceptions were purely sensual. The
materials furnished the passive brain by the senses were not in the least
degree wrought into shape by the deceased understanding.

Of pain there
was some little; of pleasure there was much; but of moral pain or
pleasure none at all. Thus your wild sobs floated into my ears with all
their mournful cadences, and were appreciated in their every variation of
sad tone; but they were soft musical sounds and no more; they conveyed to
the extinct reason no intimation of the sorrows which gave them birth;
while the large and constant tears which fell upon my face, telling the
bystanders of a heart which broke, thrilled every fibre of my frame with
ecstasy alone.

The day waned; and, as its light faded away, I became possessed by a
vague uneasiness- an anxiety such as the sleeper feels when sad real
sounds fall continuously within his ear- low distant bell tones, solemn,
at long but equal intervals, and commingling with melancholy dreams.
Night arrived; and with its shadows a heavy discomfort. It oppressed my
limbs with the oppression of some dull weight, and was palpable. There
was also a moaning sound, not unlike the distant reverberation of surf,
but more continuous, which beginning with the first twilight, had grown
in strength with the darkness.

Suddenly lights were brought into the
room, and this reverberation became forthwith interrupted into frequent
unequal bursts of the same sound, but less dreary and less distinct. The
ponderous oppression was in a great measure relieved; and, issuing from
the flame of each lamp, (for there were many,) there flowed unbrokenly
into my ears a strain of melodious monotone.

And when now, dear Una,
approaching the bed upon which I lay outstretched, you sat gently by my
side, breathing odor from your sweet lips, and pressing them upon my
brow, there arose tremulously within my bosom, and mingling with the
merely physical sensations which circumstances had called forth, a
something akin to sentiment itself- a feeling that, half appreciating,
half responded to your earnest love and sorrow,- but this feeling took no
root in the pulseless heart, and seemed indeed rather a shadow than a
reality, and faded quickly away, first into extreme quiescence, and then
into a purely sensual pleasure as before.

It was midnight; and you still sat by my side. All others had departed
from the chamber of Death. They had deposited me in the coffin. The lamps
burned flickeringly; for this I knew by the tremulousness of the
monotonous strains.

But, suddenly these strains diminished in
distinctness and in volume. Finally they ceased. The perfume in my
nostrils died away. Forms affected my vision no longer.

The oppression of
the Darkness uplifted itself from my bosom. A dull shock like that of
electricity pervaded my frame, and was followed by total loss of the idea
of contact. All of what man has termed sense was merged in the sole
consciousness of entity, and in the one abiding sentiment of duration.

The mortal body had been at length stricken with the hand of the deadly
Decay.

Jackie Olsen · Post by **Jackie Olsen** » Mon Aug 21, 2000 5:48 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote

Similarly I have heard before that a woman is closest to death when giving birth - that her soul hovers between worlds of life and death as these worlds converge... other events of life could be likened to that moment of juxtaposition, if only we open our eyes to them...

Amen, Lori ... that is exactly what giving birth felt like to me. I remember saying to the doctor ..."Oh, I'm awake now, I see everything so clearly.."

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In Beauty,

Jackie

Panther · Post by **Panther** » Mon Aug 21, 2000 3:47 pm

First... as always:

Thank You, Canna-sempai. Excellent, emotional and touching.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Allen M.:

Van's post is every bit real. My repost is my story, Panther.

(snip)

We are all living on borrowed time, so make peace with your own soul on this earth while you can -- and live for today, but a little for tomorrow, because death can come at any time like a thief, and steal you away.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Allen-san,

Believe me... I know about living on borrowed time as well... While my initial reply seemed (and was) flippant, it was real. My Grandfather and step-grandmother went just like that... I apologize for the flippant nature of that reply.

I had a long talk with him... He came to visit me and I asked for another chance as well. I got that other chance, but he asked for an "intermediate" payment of health and ability. I understand... I have no idea when he'll return. He returned to visit my Daddy when no one was expecting it. He's been dancing with my Momma for over a dozen years.

I originally dealt with it by being depressed and "dark"... That lasted for years. Now, I guess I've started dealing with it by being light and flippant. Interestingly enough, I get told (seems like constantly) that I'm "too serious"... Again, apologies for tettering on that line.

On top of Canna-sempai's excellent prose, we get yet another example from Lori-sempai proving that dialing 911 can get you killed...

Van Canna · Post by **Van Canna** » Mon Aug 21, 2000 3:55 pm

Panther-san,

Thanks for the compliment but it is undeserved.

What I post is not my prose but the mixed writings of famous authors. I just pick the works reflecting my emotional make up and, hopefully, the make up and yearnings of others.

The study of martial arts goes hand in hand
With the beauty of emotional depths!

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Van Canna

Allen M. · Post by **Allen M.** » Mon Aug 21, 2000 4:56 pm

Panther,

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote

Again, apologies for tettering on that line

I never read into your posts anything that would even come close to warranting one. This is a good expressing and learning post; I like to read what you write.

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Allen, Home: http://www.ury2k.com/pulse mirror: http://home.ici.net/~uechi/