Trilogy: My Pain

The ultimate punishment is...
Death.
No, not one's death as is often thought, but the death of another.

When there is a love triangle involving two girls and a guy for instance, one of the girls usually feels she has more right to be with the guy than the other. But if he is interested in the other girl, she decides to commit suicide.
This is the ultimate punishment. They can never be together because apart they feel guilty, together, the feel guilt and loss, to the point that it turns to hate for each other.

When a mother abandons her child, and then ten years later she comes back for forgiveness, of course the child is not interested. Everyone calls her a bad mother and tries to send her away. But then she announces that she is suddenly terminally ill, and the entire world turns against the son, demanding that he forgives her. Him forgiving her or not in the end does not change the fact that he gets to loose her twice: Once when she abandoned him, and the other to death. The child already lived his life thinking his fate was punishment for some crime he had committed as a child. Her death would prove his point more in his eyes would it not? It would take a miracle to keep that kid from going south, won't it?

Have a fight with someone, and you know you are wrong. Maybe you said something that upset them really bad, and drove them over the edge. They commit suicide, and you never really get a chance to say "I'm Sorry." So you are left wondering if it was truly your fault that this unfortunate demise occurred, or if it was bound to happen anyway in the end.

You get a message that a certain friend is bitter towards you, yet you have not the faintest idea why. And in all seriousness of the matter, he or she fails to talk to you from that point onwards, despite your desperate attempts to make peace for what the devil himself knows not of. Then in a fatal accident, he is ripped away from life, and you are left with the pain and regret in your heart. What is it that I did to wrong him? Did he ever forgive me? And if, pray it be a blessing still, you are Christian, you are burdened by the additional plague that this certain someone might not have made it to heaven because he died harboring a fight in his heart against you. Now while some may say the fact that you apologized makes you free from guilt, it is totally impossible to be free now is it not? You were more than mere acquaintances with this fellow, and to believe that you have something to do with the fact that you two might never meet again, not even in the after life, or at least not above is too sad for words...and yes, is also truly a form of punishment for that sin...

Death.

Many believe death to self is the ultimate punishment. Yes it may be a free pass to eternal damnation, but it is bloody hell more painful to remain with the pain in the heart.
I have never been to the other side, thank heavens, but I have been on this end, and I have seen death that came with it more than the pain and sorrows of loosing the deceased. I have known death that unraveled a once tightly formed bond, so much so that the members become worse than strangers...but simply members of the human race, cohabiting the same space. Too disgusted to be more than that to each other, yet bound by some final wish made at a death bed to remain together.

How ironic it seems, that an unloved lover tells her lover to be happy with the woman he has picked over her, while the doctor clearly states that the cause of her death is that of betrayed love?
How ironic it seems, that we say we fear the unknown and try to stay clear of it to keep 'safe', yet the minute one is pushed to a far wall in an extreme situation, death - which is by far the greatest of the unknowns - is the first exit considered by most?

This punishment. This thorn. This tragedy. This plague. This force that we do not understand, yet holds so much of us bound and controls half of our fate - the other half controlled by its mortal opposite, life.
Death. How we fear it, how we shy from it. Yet when the heart turns cold and life is shed aside...how we run to it.