The Pursuit of Vitality

It was the story of three generations; their lives impinging on each other. As young Zb accompanied her mother and rummaged through her deceased father’s possessions, only to discover that there was a part of her father’s life that he had chosen not to reveal to his precious daughter, she was mortified by this truth. Zb had doted on her father. He had always made her feel that as a father, he only belonged to her. He had been the greatest truth in her life; she was perhaps mortified by the revelation that the greatest truth in her life had been a lie.

Zb’s most treasured memories were of her father. Her father had always protected her from the harsh discipline that limited a child’s freedom to experience the scents and flavours of their world. He had brightened her darkest days; he had always been the one to mellow the mood of the household. He laughed off the discontentment and caution that his wife constantly exercised. To young Zb, he was her hero. Yet, the person she believed she had known as she knew herself, had suddenly become a stranger after his death. The man who had made himself responsible for the plants in the garden, the happiness of his daughter, the happiness of the servants, and the healing of innumerable ailing patients, had stepped out of this world without an explanation.

Zb’s grandfather had also bid goodbye to the world at a time when his presence had been most felt. He had dined to a fine meal with his wife while they were aboard a ship; he had collapsed right after the meal, and had to be laid to rest in the ocean. He did not live to see his daughter who was still in her mother’s womb at the time.

Zb’s mother had lived a hard life, and she was probably more acquainted with the harsh realities of life than her husband was. She refused to understand Zb’s eccentricity; yet, all her struggles were directed at protecting the world of her child who refused to accept the constraints of the reality of her world.

Zb had grown up surrounded by vitality- the vitality of her father, mother, grandmother, and a grandfather she had not seen. Yet, Zb died young. The child who had witnessed the most vital people in her life fade away, died young, leaving behind a void in the minds and lives of the people who knew her. What happened of the vitality that had nurtured her? What happened to the vitality that she exuded? It lived on- in the books she wrote, in the minds of the readers who read her words.

That is life in a nutshell. The most vital people in our lives will die. The most vital stories that nurtured us, and that we swallowed as the greatest truths that touched our lives, will die. We too, will die. The vitality that nurtured us, and that we learned to exude, will eventually  live only in the work we leave behind.