A Life

By Jude LaHaye

All flesh dies, but the essence of the human being is eternal. Eternity is one of those terms human beings can't get their heads around, but it's real and their eternal essences swim in it, returning to new life by their own volition. In "A Life", we examine one such essence through its lifetimes on the planet Earth. This particular essence experiences grave difficulties in overcoming its animality, however, and in life after life it suffers...and yet, it returns. It returns to try again and again. Though not particularly cheerful, we hope "A Life" will be thought provoking...enjoy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jude LaHaye
• Release date: Dec 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223304463

Jude LaHaye

Jude LaHaye is a Buddhist. Buddhists believe that the highest form of sentience is the human being. They also believe that the meaning of life is...Life. LaHaye struggles with his belief system and the evidence of his own human interactions and observations. His books are born of this struggle.

Book preview

A Life

Jude LaHaye

Published by Jude LaHaye, 2023.

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

A LIFE

First edition. December 27, 2023.

Copyright © 2023 Jude LaHaye.

ISBN: 979-8223304463

Written by Jude LaHaye.

For My Mother, may we meet again in many future lives together...

Copyright 2016, Jude LaHaye

Contents

CHAPTER:  MENOPHESTE

CHAPTER:  SANTHA ONE.

CHAPTER:  SANTHA TWO

CHAPTER:  SANTHA THREE

CHAPTER:  SANTHA FOUR

CHAPTER:  ESAI ONE

CHAPTER:  ESAI TWO

CHAPTER:  SERRA ONE

CHAPTER:  SERRA TWO

CHAPTER:  SERRA THREE

CHAPTER:  SERRA FOUR

CHAPTER:  SERRA FIVE

CHAPTER:  SERRA SIX

CHAPTER:  SALICIA ONE

CHAPTER:  SALICIA TWO

CHAPTER:  SALICIA THREE

CHAPTER:  SAMWELL ONE

CHAPTER:  SAMWELL TWO

CHAPTER:  SAMWELL THREE

CHAPTER:  UNNAMED ONE

CHAPTER:  UNWANTED

CHAPTER:  UNNAMED TWO

CHAPTER:  ALICIA

CHAPTER:  ADAM

CHAPTER:  UNNAMED THREE

CHAPTER:  ABANDONED

CHAPTER:  CLARISSA

CHAPTER:  CHUBBY ONE

CHAPTER:  CHUBBY TWO

CHAPTER:  CHUBBY THREE

CHAPTER:  CHUBBY FOUR

CHAPTER:  CHUBBY FIVE

CHAPTER:  CHUBBY SIX

CHAPTER:  CHUBBY SEVEN

CHAPTER:  CHUBBY EIGHT

CHAPTER:  CHUBBY NINE

CHAPTER:  CHUBBY TEN

CHAPTER:  UNNAMED FOUR

CHAPTER:  UNWANTED TWO

CHAPTER:  UNNAMED FIVE

CHAPTER:  ALICE

CHAPTER:  ALEC

CHAPTER:  UNNAMED SIX

CHAPTER:  ABANDONED TWO

CHAPTER:  CLARICE

CHAPTER:  CHARLEY ONE

CHAPTER:  CHARLEY TWO

CHAPTER:  CHARLEY THREE

CHAPTER:  CHARLEY FOUR

CHAPTER:  CHARLEY FIVE

CHAPTER:  CHARLEY SIX

CHAPTER:  CHARLEY SEVEN

CHAPTER:  HELENA ONE

CHAPTER:  HELENA TWO

CHAPTER:  HELENA THREE

CHAPTER:  HELENA FOUR

CHAPTER:  HELENA FIVE

CHAPTER:  HELENA SIX

CHAPTER:  HELENA SEVEN

CHAPTER:  HELENA EIGHT

CHAPTER:  HELENA NINE

CHAPTER:  HELENA  TEN

CHAPTER:  HELENA ELEVEN

CHAPTER:  HELENA TWELVE

CHAPTER:  HELENA THIRTEEN

CHAPTER:  HELENA FOURTEEN

CHAPTER:  HELENA FIFTEEN

CHAPTER:  HELENA SIXTEEN

CHAPTER:  HELENA SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER:  HELENA EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER:  HELENA NINETEEN

CHAPTER:  HELENA TWENTY

CHAPTER:  VIPPA ONE

CHAPTER:  VIPPA TWO

CHAPTER:  VIPPA THREE

CHAPTER:  VIPPA FOUR

CHAPTER: VIPPA FIVE

CHAPTER:  VIPPA SIX

CHAPTER:  VIPPA SEVEN

CHAPTER:  ANMARITAVOICHI

CHAPTER:  MENOPHESTE

Because my father is a famous warrior, I am also elevated in our society.  Because I am a woman, I am elevated to serve our Queen.

She is fearsome and she is feared.  But she likes me, and treats me well.  She clothes me in her own raiment.  She teaches me knowledge that secures women a place in our world.  This knowledge is that of healing.  Or of not healing.  Or, as it often happens, of making sick.  Of killing.

This knowledge ensures our lifestyle; our wealth.  The respect we receive as our due course from men.  Even if we must cow them to receive this respect.

I work hard.  I am a quick learner.  She appreciates me.  I do everything I can to stay in her good graces.  I rise early, I retire late, all in the service of her.

When she dies, I must attend her, along with seventy other young women who had served her while she lived. 

I wish to live.  I attempt to escape the tomb of the attendants but am captured and returned to her enormous and labyrinthine burial chambers.

I am given the honor of being the attendant who personally waits on the dead Queen in her funeral chamber.  When the cup of poison is brought to me in ceremony, I drink it without choking on its bitter and deadly contents.  This is my next to last difficult act in the service of her.

The last difficult act is the dying itself.  Although a debilitating lethargy steals over me after I drink my cup, the agony in my belly is fierce and prolonged.  Tears course down my paralyzed face for full minutes before blissful unconsciousness descends.  I realize with an emotion that is not joy, but rather something sharper and more unpleasant, that I now have attendants who wipe my face dry and reapply my heavy cosmetics.  I have these attendants but briefly.

I see my father in the company that attends the funeral ceremony.  He is dry-eyed and proud, a warrior to the last.

If he wishes to help me, to save me, there is no vestige of such a desire in his visage.

I try to reach out to him, to beg him to save me, but the poison has robbed me of power over my limbs, and over my tongue.

I pass.

CHAPTER:  SANTHA ONE.

The old woman stopped breathing last night.  I tried to pull her arms back around me but the softness and warmth that her arms once had were gone, replaced by a cold and waxy stiffness.  Her arms could not be coaxed or coerced to surround me again.  Her smell had changed.  I heard her inhale a very shallow breath and then exhale a profound breath, and then the quality that distinguished her from others was gone.  She was warm for a while.  Now she is cold.  I am bereft.  I miss her hugely.  Her quality. 

I rise before the others and go outside the cave.  It is just becoming day.  My feet are dirty.  I am dirty.  I stand in dirt that is drier than dry, but as active as liquid.  More dirt squirts between my toes and up my shins.  I breathe dirt.  In the distance I can smell rain.  That will be most welcome, rain.  I can cry in the rain and no one will see.

The rain will rinse the dirt from me.  Even my feet will be clean, briefly.  And my tears can flow unseen.

When the others arise, the keening begins.  They have discovered the old woman.  They carry something lacking any defining quality whatsoever from the cave.  It is the size and shape of a person and it is wrapped in skins.  I follow the line of people into the woods, where they lay down their bundle and begin to dig.  In what seems like moments, a deep pit is dug and what used to be the old woman is placed feet-first in it.  I feel dizzy with a sadness I don’t have the right word for.  We don’t have a lot of words, and we have even fewer skins, so the wrapping that the old woman had worn on her last walk are bundled back up to return with us to the clearing and the cave.  Two men remain behind to fill the pit back in.  They will hum a tune that we always hum when we bury the people.  The tune has no words.

The old woman had seen thirty-eight winters.  I have seen twelve.

The skins are given to me.  They symbolize something about what the old woman had valued.  She had valued me.  I want the rain to come quickly, but the sun is now high in the sky, and the rain clouds are still far away on a turbulent horizon. 

The rain finally comes after we’ve all lain on our skins for the night.  Some of us are sleeping and some of us are listening to the rain pummeling the dirt.  After several minutes, the dirt is mud and the sound changes.  We will need to put logs and stones across the doorway to keep the mud and rain outside of the cave.  This should have been done long ago.  It is my job to warn the people of weather changes.  I didn’t tell anyone about the rain.  I was only thinking about the old woman. 

I get a lot of curious and even angry looks from the people as they rise and start hauling the logs and rocks to the cave’s entrance.  They even mutter a little, but the words, such as they are, are not audible.

Feeling guilty, I arise and help them with their task.  One of the women puts her hand on my shoulder and gives it a squeeze.  I look into her eyes and see sorrow and something else we again don’t have a word for.  She is sorry about my loss.  It’s like she feels it, too, or remembers feeling it some other time. This makes something bloom in my chest, but it’s soon in my eyes, falling as tears.  I turn quickly and return to my skins and pull them up over my head.  After what feels like forever, I fall asleep, and when I awaken the day has arrived and the rain has not yet left.  My face feels puffy.  I remain bereft.  Alone.

My parents don’t see me anymore.  They have four other children much younger than me.  I am expected to find my own food.  Catch my own animals for meat and skin.  Carry my own water.  After my mother showed me what to do when the monthly blood started coming, she moved me and my meager possessions over to the old woman’s skins.  The old woman was my mother’s mother.  I was glad for the move.

Now I am alone.  I feel her absence like it is a presence.  This confuses me.  How could this hole in me be something that is not a hole?  And yet, I feel it, like a knot of stone, in the middle of me.

⸙

The days pass, and I slowly start noticing things again.  The rain has brought new growth with it and I pick many helpful plants.  I also dig for young roots which are good to eat.  I carefully dry the helpful plants and store them in the skins I have saved for this purpose.  I place the roots in a pile at the foot of my skins so that everyone can be witness to my harvest.  Hiding food is forbidden in the village.  My pile of roots is safe out in the open.  Stealing food is also forbidden.  I have yet to learn the joy that should come from sharing, however.  As in many things, I go through the motions and will my face to not give away my thoughts.

In addition to being the foreteller of weather, I am also the village healer.  Much of what I know has been passed down from mother to daughter over many generations.  I have added much to what was already known.  This I have done from tasting every plant leaf, root, and flower that I have found.  Just a little.  In this way, when the plant made me sick, I have survived.  It is as useful to know the sickening plants as it is to know the healing ones.  I warn the village which plants to avoid.  When they ignore me and sicken and even die, the respect I have earned grows.  I learned my craft from the old woman.  My own mother lacked the instinct for the work.

And so now, at 12 winters, I am like an elder.  People come to me for cures and for advice.  People do not socialize with me.  They think that there is magic in me, and they fear it. 

The loneliness remains, this stone in my middle.  I cannot tolerate it much longer.  It does not lessen even when I sleep, and I often awake with tears on my skins, face, and hair.  This is a way to become ill, and so I take some of the flower of the large yellow plant and I drink a lot of water.  In this plant, the flower is the only helpful quality.  The leaves and roots are useless, but not harmful.

⸙

I find myself watching a boy.  One boy in particular.  He is very handsome and well-built.  He is not closely related to me, but is the son of a distant relative of my father’s.  Although I follow him with my eyes, he does not have eyes for me. 

My loneliness drives me to make more obvious gestures.  I offer him some of my young savory roots.  Although he gladly accepts them, and gives me back his brilliant smile, I detect that he is also trying to distance himself from me.   It is not fear