Words that Never Leave You: “When you are born, your name is entered into a book in the sky with a date. That is the date you die, and there isn’t anything you can do to change that.”
Part Twenty-Seven in an ongoing series from Hollie's book "Words That Never Leave You: Fifty Pearls of Wisdom and Reflection from Survivors Across the World."
When I was a small girl growing up in North Queensland, playing with tadpoles covered in mud and swinging breathlessly from mango trees, my Nana Rita – a single mother of seven and one of the most remarkable women I know – would walk me to the local cemetery. Together, we would clean up the rotting graves and place bright new flowers beside the headstones crumbling with neglect.
Nana encouraged me to sit next to headstones and chat with the dead, assuring me they like the company and not to fear the dead. In essence, her words struck me as not to fear what we do not know.
“When you are born, your name is entered into a book in the sky with a date,” she said matter-of-factly. “That is the date you die, and there isn’t anything you can do to change that.”
If we cannot twist our destiny, in what ways could we live our life with a little more abandon?
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