I was about six or seven when the fear of death found me.  I remember shivering into the mid-night with my eyes widely open and squeezing my mom’s hand hard.  Weirdly enough, the person whose images kept showing in front of my eyes was a famous anchor I saw every day at the time from TV.  I was trying to convince myself that everyone would die, there was no exception if you were famous.  But it didn’t help.

That’s why I always hated astronomy.  When I was in 2^nd or 3^rd grade, my parents took me to an astronomy museum where you sat on a comfortable chair, having your head raised up to look at a fake, dark sky with all the stars showing.  Then a solemn voice told you all the histories about the stars.  How long they had been there; how much longer they would stay there; when was the last time a comet was seen; if you missed it, sorry, you wouldn’t see it ever again, unless you were too naïve to understand what “after another ninety years” meant…  It was the worst day of my life.  And I’d been dreadfully upset for weeks.  I was then eight at most.  Why did an eight-year-old need to be forced to think about the day when she was already dead?

Now thirty years later, I haven’t been becoming braver.  But my brain has been fuller with other stuff, and whenever the mind has an attend to go there, I’d say to myself, “stop.”  Until last year I saw the similar fear on my daughter’s face, and I got it immediately.  I gave her many hugs and said I’d stay with her forever.  Then I said I realized immortality might not be a good thing.  Because just speak for myself, I probably would achieve nothing if I knew I had the time through eternity.

But none of these cheered her up.  She was upset, even crying after she saw the human anatomy picture in an encyclopedia.  She said she didn’t want to die.  So, I chose to tell her that, I believed by the time she grew up, the scientists would find a way to make human immortal.  That helped immediately.  One day when we were driving on a family trip, she suddenly said cheerfully, “I’m going to be immortal.  Mom too.  Daddy too.  We are all going to be.”

I don’t think I was lying.  It’s possible.  Or maybe we’d gather in heaven.  Or maybe we’d live another life.  And if we were lucky, or unlucky, we’d have this life’s memory and recall the good times of being a mother and a daughter.  We’d then hug each other tightly, even if each in a different body…

And that’s why “Tuck Everlasting” intrigued me so much.  A beautiful story like all the others that are meant to be felt rather than analyzed.  Bravo to be a children’s story.  Whoever let their children read should better be ready for all the questions that’d be asked.

“Living’s heavy work, but off to one side, the way we are, it’s useless, too.  It don’t make sense.  If I knowed how to climb back on the wheel, I’d do it in a minute.  You can’t call it living without dying.  So you can’t call it living, what we got.  We just are, we just be, like rocks beside the road.”  This was Tuck’s speech when he tried to talk Winnie (yes, another Winnie) out of the idea of telling the secret of the spring to others.  Despite his wise talk, Tuck looked enviously at the dying man-in-yellow but wept over Winnie’s death after a long, fulfilled life.  So, he was not that determined himself.

I can’t tell why Winnie didn’t drink the spring.  My best guess is a combination of the memory of Tuck’s speech, the fear of trying, and the always, always existing curiosity from a human being of what’ll happen next.  Come to think of it, are the people eagerly searching for immortality usually the ones who have some unsatisfactory in their lives?  The things they can’t possess make them believe that only the infinity of time will help or give them comfort?

I probably wouldn’t drink the spring if I had it.  But it doesn’t mean my fear is less.  And before my mind is trespassing further, I have to make an abruptly stop.