Tania Safi | Producer / Director

Dear "Death",

It's odd writing to you when I don't really know who you are. We've met before, many times. I know that I am not afraid of coming head to head with you, but I often imagine how I'll get through life if you were to take someone I love. Again. 

Of course it's inevitable. You can't feed a plant without water or sun. You can't regenerate a forest without seeds.

And everything that lives will die. It is a waste of time to fear something that is so much a part of what it means to be alive, but that is easier to say than truly believe when you are already in someone's bones, blood or body.

I have watched you wriggle inside people I adore. People I grew up with who had only just become old enough to live their dreams and people who were old enough to welcome you entirely.

But where did you take them? Especially those who fought you off. I've thought a lot about it. And I don't think it matters anymore. I am surrounded by people who are certain that you take life by the hand and throw it into another body. They are sure that family remains family, they just change roles between the decades or centuries that they wait patiently for one another. They are sure that they are constantly learning, bettering every existence. They know that the feeling of meeting someone who you feel you've met before is simply because you have.

I have dreamed and been comforted by the people I love who have met you. The animals, too. So maybe some part of their life exists in a way I am not aware of. Maybe it's more simple than that. But the dreams have always made me feel that all I need to know (for now) is that no one ever really dies.

I refuse to give you anymore thought than that.

I am alive today.

See you some day, who knows when.

—Tania Safi (2018)

Editor's notes: Tania Safi is a journalist, producer, director, film-maker and activist. Winner of the United Nations International Film Festival (NYC) for her animation, Trab Laus and Sydney’s Best Filmmaker award in 2012, Tania is perhaps most recognised as on-screen talent for Buzzfeed. Currently, Tania is based in London, producing and directing films for her production company, Ouff Films. 

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