• Huckleberry Finn X (but partly not my fault - I did not get a hold of the book)
• Who`s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? V
• Heart of Darkness - in progress (EDIT: 17/4 - 09 - Finished!)
  
• the damned grammar X - but I have high hopes for tomorrow.

It has been a strange week, it has been strange even if nothing out of the ordinary has occured the past seven days. I`ve done pretty much everything I usually do over the course of a week, but it has still been odd. Perhaps because I`ve spent much of it thinking "this time yesterday/two days ago/five days ago/last week" I did so-and-so. I know for a fact that tomorrow I will think "this time last week I was running as fast as I could down at the gym, trying to forget the day before, failing miserably."

I have just been very aware of the passage of time, and I know why. Sam`s been on my mind, one way or another all week. Sometimes he`s been right in front in a way that made me unable to think or do anything else at the time, and other times just in the back of my mind someplace, but always there. A lot of things have been reminding me of him. Down at my mother`s shop we have two fluffy llamas, can`t look at them anymore without feeling a sad sort of smile creep over my face. My favourite t-shirt has a text on it that he`s directly responsible for sending my way - the songs he sent me are all nicely organised in a file, as are all the e-mails from him that I`ve been re-reading.

I`m not crying as badly as I did the first two days anymore, perhaps because I`ve had to accept the fact that he`s not gonna attack me out of nowhere with random anymore, perhaps it`s because I`ve cried the amount I`m capable of already. But perhaps mostly because I know very well what he would have told me if he could. He`d say something along the lines of not wanting Laila-lady to cry because that`d make him sad, and that he`d much rather have me chuckle at his silly stuff and be merry. By this point he would have gone past his quota of serious for a day and made a joke to try to make me laugh. He would probably have succeeded too.

I wonder if dying doing something you love is a good way to go. It really does sound like it at first, what better way to go? And shouldn`t it ease some of the loss for the people left behind? Theese thoughts have occupied me all weekend, but I can`t seem to get a fix on it. I can`t really let go of it either, it`s as if I`m afraid of going mad unless I find an answer to settle with. Theese thoughts didn`t hit me out of nowhere, of course they didn`t. I lost someone at K2 this weekend. A lot of people did. 

It`s always a danger, everyone knows that. The great mountains claims many lives every year, and the people who venture there see  the people who never came home. Their corporeal ghosts just lying where they fell because noone is able to bring them back down. It serves as a grim reminder that things doesen`t always go well. I have a friend on the way up to Everest, he`s been there for a long time and he`s not coming back. A lot of the same thoughts I have now visited me back then. It`s not so much grievance as silent contemplation. They loved what they were doing, they loved the challenge and the thrill and made every precaution. And noone knew the dangers better than they did, they knew every trip could be their last. We all knew that, but it`s not something you choose to think about.

I can`t help but wonder though, do they accept it? Somewhere in the back of their minds, fogged by exhaustion and lack of oxygen, do they know what is happening? Do they accept that they won`t be going anywhere again? Do they think their goodbyes or are they too disoriented to realise what is happening and merely sink gratefully into what they mistake as warmth, but is really the numbness you can`t be called back from? And if so, is that a last mercy? I don`t think I will ever know, not the way they know.
In the middle of the hopelessness though, somewhere in the back of your mind you have already accepted that they would have wanted it no other way. It was their life, and they would have gone back again and again, because somewhere up there they saw something beautiful that made it all worth it. If they saw it around them, in the harsh, unsmooth and rough beauty of the nature, face to face with the primal elements where everything man has done means nothing, or saw it in themselves I won`t ever know. But perhaps a bit of both. 

The fact still remains that even if they would have been too sedated by cold and exhaustion and delusion to accept death when it came, they accepted it when they started to climb and decided to chance. Skill is important, but sometimes you can do everything right and it won`t make a difference - and they all knew it and accepted it. So the rest of us find comfort in the thought that they died doing what they loved, hoping they got to see what they came to see, or got to feel the trhill they sought in standing on the top, looking down at the world. Feeling like a champion. Of course we would have wanted them to sit old, with grandkids on their knee telling them about their great adventures and inspiring them. But you won`t always get what you want.

In the end, what I decided on was that they died not only doing what they loved, they died living. And I will never forget them.