Around the Next Corner

While most of us always hope for a happy ending, my heart is waiting for death around every corner. We have traveled through the bleak world with them fighting for survival, hiding from the "bad guys" and trying to find the food and shelter they need to live. Through it all, the father's coughing gets worse, and we know in our hearts that it is just a matter of time (and not years) before he is going to die. The son is too young to have the intellectual ability to survive on his own and not physically capable of surviving on his own. Most important, he doesn't want to use the gun, so he would easily fall victim or starve, whichever came first.

Their existence is in a world that is filled with ash and death. Nothing is alive, no plants, no wild live, only other human beings, so we don't have a lot of hope that they will find some deserted island with no other human beings that will offer any natural solutions to their lack of food and water. Even if the ash clears, there has to be an incredible amount of contamination and if by some miracle the earth does start to rebirth itself, how long before it is safe to consume. If this was a nuclear explosion, will the radiation kill them before starvation? And it was volcanic in nature, it is acidic and stifles growth.

For me, the love that permeates their relationship, and the faith they both demonstrate as they continue through this journey is deeply moving. Death is inevitable, so if they both died I'd be sad for a second, but their relationship, constant display of faith, their display of charitable decisions in the light of immenent danger, would outweigh the sadness and leave me with a sens of respect for their humanity. There are only two ways this story could end on a sad note: (1) if they fall prey to the "bad people" and (2) if the father dies leaving the son to starve to death. Death is not sad, rather the journey we have traveled and the paths we chose along the way.