Do you believe in life after death?
When her musician husband Orpheus disappears from a party boat in Sydney Harbour and is later found drowned, Eurydice goes through all the usual stages of grief. Disbelief, blame, anger, withdrawal. And then finally, she decides to find him.
But how do you go about finding someone who is dead? Where do you look, and how? And supposing that you do find them, what then? In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the world of the aliens is so, well, alien that the humans can’t even begin to understand it, let alone communicate. Is the world of the dead any less strange and inconceivable to the living?
In the book I’m currently writing, I’m trying to explore love and death – in particular the kind of obsessive and intense love that binds the beloved even beyond the borders of material existence. Death is something that’s interested me for a long time – our last great adventure into the unknown. Love, for me, is also unknown to an extent. Like most people I’ve fallen in and out of love, have felt (so I thought at the time) an eternal bond and then lost it, but I’ve never felt so strongly about a man that I’d willingly follow him into the grave. For a child, yes. So I’m having to work quite hard at imagining how Eurydice feels…and this while backpacking Europe as it happens.
What do you think about love and death? Have you loved greatly? Have you ever seen a ghost or had an NDA? Talk to me (fallaciousrose@outlook.com) – I’d love to hear.
Photo by Filipe Almeida on Unsplash