Fragile Flame.

Tue, 06 May 2008 11:44:16 GMT

Written last night:

i’ve been staring at this all evening, willing words to come. i keep being drawn back to newspaper articles and Bebo profiles and upset messages from teenage girls instead.

There was a car crash on the road out of Peterhead last night. A girl was killed heading home to Cruden Bay. Lauren Roberts. 15 years old.

She was in my brother’s year at school. Same classes as Isla and Megan and Chloe. Should have been sitting Standard Grade English with them tomorrow. But she’s gone. And these kids are supposed to carry on, supposed to hold their heads up high and sit their exam tomorrow knowing that the empty seat in the hall should have belonged to her.

i’ve been following them on Bebo all day, these teenagers trying to cope with this very adult thing called death. It’s heartbreaking reading their messages, watching them trying to come to terms with their grief. They’ve made a bebo tribute to her, because i guess it’s all they know how to do. Because, in the end, what else is there for them to do? ...

15 years old. That’s what i keep coming back to. The injustice of it all. That could have been my brother. It could have been Isla or Megan or Chloe, or any of our Driven girls. It could have been any one of my young people here in Prestwick. She was just a regular teenage girl like any of them. And then she simply wasn’t.

We think we’re immortal when we’re young. Especially as teenagers. We think that nothing and no one is ever going to make us stop. And then something like this comes along and proves us wrong. Something like this comes along and shows us how temporary it all is.

Life is fragile. We forget it sometimes, but life is more fragile than the palest piece of glass. Something like this comes along and we remember how easily we are broken; how quickly we can be fractured and splintered and gone; how easily it can all be blown away.

And then we forget. Life goes on, as it has to, and we forget.

i hope that some of these kids don’t forget. i hope that the pain eases and the wound heals, but i hope that they remember what it is to walk this fraying rope.. to live this fragile life. i hope they remember that. i hope they remember to get up and hug their families; to tell their friends they love them before it has to be done on a tribute page; to smile at strangers in the street; to dance and scream and giggle abundantly; and to live every day like it’s their last.

One of the Driven girlies updated her profile on Bebo today. It now simply says this:
"Wake up. You are alive."

As simple or profound as that may be.. today that’s what i’ve learned.

That life is short.. so live it.

Bless your soul, Lauren Ellen Roberts.
Your story’s touched more lives than you could know..

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 00:57:17 GMT

i don't know what possessed me to think this might be a good idea..
But, following on from the suggestion of a few different people, i'm
going to try selling some of my photos - mostly as cards - here.

It might not come to anything - in fact, it probably won't, - but if it
happens to work i'll donate it back to Matumaini and the kids there.
Anything's worth a try once, eh?

Like a child I will dance in Your presence

Fragile Flame.