Weekly Writing – December 11 2022

I hope they don’t hate me.
It would be fair if they did, but it would be an awful way to die, wouldn’t it? Hated by everyone around you.
They say the defences are going to fall. Any day now. There’s no hope left, no rescue coming. Nothing in the world that could save us now.
Yet we’re all still waiting. I heard a mother, while I was dishing out lunch, tell her daughter it was all right – the soldiers would be there any day. Everything was going to be fine.
It’s too cruel. How can we do this to them? To each other, to ourselves?
If we know it’s over, do we really want our last days, our last memories, to be fear and dark and waiting? There has to be a better way. A kinder way.
I hope they won’t hate me. I hope they’ll understand. It was the kindest way I could think of – no fear, no pain, for most of them, at least. A few might realize, before it’s over.
When, after dinner, they all start quietly going to sleep. Deep, peaceful sleep, and then, without even knowing it, they’ll just stop breathing. Mothers holding daughters. Lovers in each other’s arms. Whoever finds us, if anyone ever does, will wonder how it was so peaceful for us when it was a nightmare for all the rest.
I’ll leave this journal for them to find. I guess it won’t matter to me, really, how they judge me, but I hope they understand. I’ve served these people breakfast, lunch, and dinner for months. I know all their faces, their names. I don’t want to watch them die horribly.
I’ll eat with the rest of them. There’ll be no one to hold me, but at least I can drift off knowing that I kept them safe every way I ever could.