
Living is Hard
She could hear her mother calling, saying her name loud and clear, even though her mother was five years in the grave. How could these things be? How were they possible? Sleep now, she told herself, and think about it all later. But the voice pulled her back again. “Please, sister. Hold me now.” So she held the kind girl – she had forgotten to do it before - and she kept holding her, long after the kind girl’s trembling had stopped. It was all silence in the back of the lorry now and the silence was matched in the world outside, for at some point in the endless night, the lorry had stopped, and remained stopped, even though nobody came to open the door. She could no longer see the steam of her breath. Indeed, she was no longer aware of the need to breathe. And as the kind girl died in her arms, she suddenly understood. Dying is easy. Living is hard.
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