When you look at someone what do you see? Do you see the years they spent becoming what they are? Do you see the influences that caused them to develop a sense of humor or not? Do you see all the love they have, whether for another person, an animal or nature and the arts? What do you see?
In Life After, an almost instantaneous change in the state of the protagonist’s wife’s health leaves him at sea as to how to deal with the world he has come to know and an angry son who will not forgive him when her health changes for the worse. Does he become blind to who she is, who he is and why his son will never forgive him? How does he reconcile the competing needs, desires and imperatives, when he comes to realize he never really knew what he was looking at?
"People can be ticking time bombs. They affect all of us. They are in our midst. They can cause our death, or change our lives forever and we have no warning, or warnings that we ignore."
Life After is a reflection of what each of us experiences in our lives. People come and go. Some become close to us, others not so much. But do we ever really get to know them? Really know them? There are things we each hide from even our families and closest friends. For most of us, the things we hide are not major, and usually more embarrassing than important. But what about those important things that some people hide. Like someone who killed someone a long time ago and got away with it. Or someone who cheated their way through college and now have a position of trust that can affect others. And if the secret someone hides is something that can destroy the lives of others around them, what then?
People can be ticking time bombs. We see it over and over again, when someone goes into a school, college or movie theater and kills others that person doesn’t even know. They may be a terrorist or just someone who is mentally unstable. They affect all of us. They are in our midst. They can cause our death, or change our lives forever and we have no warning, or warnings that we ignore.
Our society has fundamentally changed in many ways. We must come to terms with those in our midst who do not necessarily have the best intentions for us. And we must learn to see what we gloss over today in order to keep ourselves and our families safe.
