Love is Life

"She did not want to leave it yet" (270). The juxtaposition. The change in feeling. The change of heart. Olive Kitteridge wanted to live. Only a few weeks before, Olive explained, "I don't care if i die...I'd like it" (254). Thinking about it, I do care if I die, I am just not afraid of death. Vast difference. Death does not loom over me like a haunting shadow. I know that it will come, and that it remains inevitable. I can not escape it. My heart will "someday stop, as all hearts do" (269). But, unlike Olive, I do care. I want to fight for my life, try to live as long as possible. Live everyday to the fullest. I believe Olive's change of heart came with the sensation of passion and love. Laying in the sunny room with Jack Kennison, feeling nothing but love and wanting. It lit her spark again. She wanted to live. Author, Elizabeth Stout, claims that every human being needs to be needed. No matter how old or how young, love remains what keeps people alive. I have seen it with my very own eyes. My grandfather had found a soul mate. Although lung cancer took my grandmother away from him at the ripe age of 62, he had found another love.  Zella Davidson. They were madly in love with each other, spending all day together. They decided it would be best not to marry, for they both knew how old each of them were becoming. After a happy two years together, Zella was diagnosed with stage four brain cancer. A month later, she passed away. My grandpa was ripped apart. We all knew he was not going to live much longer after Zella died. He did not have anything to look forward to when he woke up in the morning. All of the compassion and love in his life vanished. A short four months later, he was gone. Living proof. Love is life.

The Walking Dead

Let's play a game. Would you rather. The fun game where decision making meets humor. Would you rather have all the phobias known to man-kind, or have to slowly skin your family and pets alive? That's a good one. Ready for another? Would you rather die, or live as a vegetable? Well, in the case of Henry Kitterage, vegetable it is. Having suffered from a stroke, Henry, the once outgoing, friendly, popular man, now can not talk or see. Hearing remains the question. Can Henry hear his wife's whispers into his ear, telling him about his son and daughter-in-law? His wife, Olive, will never know. No sign of recognition or idenification in his movements. Just a confused, smiling stare. Olive tries to communicate with her husband. "'Squeeze my hand if you understand,"' she would whisper, hoping a small movement would occur in her husband's hand (147). But "his hand did not squeeze her's" (147). In the case of my Grandfather, vegetation was not an option. The moment he was rushed to the hospital and put on the ventilator, the cord was cut. As soon as we walked into the hospital, we told them to let him go. He always would ask me, who would want to live like that? It's not living. I believe that Olive's decision to let Henry live in a state where no one was sure if he was there or not is wrong. Nobody deserves to live like that. You're just the walking dead.

A Juxtaposing Mixture

When first diving into the chapter, Starving in Elizabeth Strout's book, Olive Kitteridge, I met Harmon. And I admit, I judged Harmon too quickly. At first I saw him as a uncanny, elderly man, lurking around and staring at young, juvenile girls. But he grew on me. I gained access into his everyday life. Living a life with a woman who he do not love anymore. Secretly seeing Daisy Foster. Most would view this complicated love fiasco as immoral. I, on the other hand, feel a juxtaposing mixture of pride and dissapointment. Pride in the fact that Harmon found an escape from his nagging wife, Bonnie. Finding a distraction from his pathetic life. He "felt blue" around the happiest time of the year, spending it with his non-existent grandchildren and his badgering wife (100). Pride that Harmon admitted to "have fallen in love with [Daisy]), fully confessing his compassion for his secret mistress (102). Pride that Harmon realized that everyone searches and desires the intimate feelings of love and benevolence. Pride in the fact that Harmon found "ferocious and full blown love" in Daisy (103). Dissapointment in his cowardly deceptions to his wife. Strout, making the assertion that all humans want to be wanted, forced me to feel more happiness in Harmon's deceitful ways than dissapointment. But, however, Bonnie deserves the right to the harsh truth. Her realtionship with Harmon remains distant and not what it used to be. She deserves to know that he has moved on. She deserves the opportunity to move on and find her spark again. She deserves love too.