The story of one man's death

by Valeriia Yatskievich (Ukraine)

I didn't expect to find China

I didn't expect to find it. Probably, death is always unexpectable. Nevertheless, I have never supposed that mine would be there, in the still unknown for me country. As far as I remember myself, China was my dream. I remember when I was a little boy who even didn’t know how to read that strange symbols in the encyclopedia for children, I looked at the photos of the Great Wall and imagined that it was a ridge of the dragon that fell asleep a long time ago. I was excited. And that feeling came up every time I thought about China. The Forbidden City in the central of Beijing was drawn in my mind for more than twenty years! More than million people spent their life by building that breathtaking complex. I saw them this year. The gold roofs looked like the mirrors of the sunshine. The scarlet walls still knew the secrets and anxieties of emperors. If they were able to speak you would hear much more than any historian could tell you about real human that was called an emperor. Just come there one day. You won’t regret, believe the dying man that is still happy. Go to the centre of the place in a front of the Hall of Supreme Harmony or go up by its snow like stairs. Go to the Meridian Gate with its unevenly red walls that reminded me the lips of a woman I loved one day. Get lost in the Jingshan Park where the magic of nature is united with the braveness of human. Just come there. No difference which of those charming places you will choose. Stay there for couple minutes with closed eyes. Forget about the present, about the crowd around yourself, about the problems that torture your mind. Just feel the light wind on your skin, feel the strongness of stones under your feet. Think, how many people have put their feet on that stones. And just want to see them, to hear their voices, to feel them around. No, don`t open your eyes! That place is more than just an attraction for your eyes. It is an attraction for your soul, for your eternity. I swear you that I felt people there, people who died a long time ago, people whose marks disappeared from that stones. However, their souls are still around. The people who were there yesterday or couple years ago – I felt them too. They could be at work or could be in another country or could be in the cosmos – I felt them. And it was strange, but I felt a people who even didn’t born yet. People who will leave their marks on that stones in the future, which I will never see by my body, but which I felt. You may think I am crazy. And maybe you’re right. I was standing at the top of Jingshan Park looking to the endless Beijing. Its bright buildings were far away and hid beyond the horizon. The pure nature just began to wake up and the trees looked ready to show their beauty to the world. I was standing there and crying. For the first time in my life I felt the real happiness, the real harmony. I felt that people – dead, alive and yet didn’t born. And I knew that from that moment I am not scared of death anymore. The joke of destiny, but couple days after my visit to the Forbidden City I felt not very well. The doctors checked me – and now I’m here, in isolation. My body is dying. It is hard for me to breathe or to make my thoughts clear for a long time. I haven’t visited all the places I planned and China is full of secrets which I will never know. Nevertheless, it gave one gift, one blessing. I didn't expect to find death here. But the eternity is the thing I didn’t expect to find at all. Only my body is dying now, not my soul. I found my eternity here and now I am not scared of the death. I will always be there, in the shadows from the tree in the Jingshan Park.