Thinking about death, I am reminded of one of the word ‘airborne’. As I reflect upon some of the most significant changes in warfare over the many years, or about the many epidemic plagues of disease, I think about how death comes in so many guises, often unseen, floating in the air. This air we breathe in order to preserve life, the same air now muddied with all manner of death-carrying detritus as the world currently faces up to the damage done. The silent killers; dirty fog, fumes, pollution, radiation, disease, and heat. The days of visualising the dark cladded figure of the Grim Reaper seem so far behind us, we are standing face to face with the image reflected back at us in the mirror. We are responsible. We are the Death we fear. And the clock is ticking now, not for the Other, but for Me, for You. No matter how safe your choices are, no matter how much care you or I take in our daily living to prevent the onset of Death, the monster is set loose. Some days it seems that all any of us can do now, is hope to survive “long enough”(to see your children grow up, to see your book published, to see your lover one last time …).

I contemplate death as a virus which inhabits both the biological and technological spaces. Death comes to us in dreams, as ghosts, as fantasy. How to visualise it? How to film it? Each day Death creeps a little closer; it is the only certainty we have, that as we live, so shall we die one day. I have passed on from Youth into that ambiguous era known as “middle age”. The body has spoken in protest, insisting that I choose to live in a way that actually supports Life. The irony seems to be that in order to live, one must accept Death. Accept the inevitable with a knowing smile that if there is an afterlife, it will be fine, and if not then eternal silence will simply be a long, long sleep, perchance to dream.

Death creeps, as a set of footsteps echoing my own as I walk across an abandoned space in a suburb, it is the sound of the soft electronic clicks and whirrs of the predator stalking children online, grooming them. Perhaps it becomes the rumble and click of the barrel of a gun, or the metallic grind of a machine in a factory claiming another life in a workplace accident.

Death is the hot breath on the neck of the captive, who is blindfolded and at the mercy of the one who holds power. Death is the blissful end to pain; the longed for sleep, the eternal rest.

Death is the punishment we dish out to those who have transgressed the acceptable boundaries of law, civility, and social constructions of normality. It has no face, no form, it is malleable, fluid, gaseous, violent, bloody, or as gentle as a pin prick in the skin. It is the empty bottle of pills lying beside the cold body. It is the lingering scent of decay in a haunted house where a tortuous murder has taken place. It is the final moment before boarding an ill-fated flight. It is the moment of distraction whilst driving too fast on a rainy night. It is the wealth of knowledge lost when a mind shuts down for the last time. It is the bomb blast, and the constant rain of bullets outside the bedroom window in a war zone. It is the rasping breath of an elderly patient lying still and prone in a hospice. It is the final scream echoing out in the dark night, as another victim succumbs to the perverse desire of evil. Sound waves. Airborne.

Death is sadness, and joy.

Unknowable.

Inevitable.

(Fiona)