The Knowers By Helen Phillips

The Knowers, by Helen Philips focuses on a woman who finds out the day of her death and lives her life with that knowledge in the back of her mind, affecting the way she lives and views things. The story begins with the woman telling her husband, Tem, that she wants to go find out the day she will die, now that they have the technology available to do so. Tem does not like the idea of this at all because he does not want to sit around in sorrow and wait for that terrible day to come. He would rather remain ignorant of their death dates than to know and live in fear for when that day comes. The woman decides to go to the office to find out her death date despite what her husband says and takes note of the climate of the environment. She begins

Once she got her piece of paper, she memorized it and tore it apart as she did not want to bring it to the house with Tem. As she arrives home, she does not tell Tem the date, but demands he wants to know. The woman gives in and begins to tell him the date when Tem yells at her to stop, for he does not want to know anymore. As the date of her death began to come around, the woman began to live in sorrow, but later would begin to mark that date with small gifts and gestures for herself. She began to almost celebrate that day and oblige the smaller things in life. The woman felt as if knowing was a blessing but a curse at the same time as she does not have to fear the days before her death but once the day is approaching, there will be grave fear. The woman continued to live pretending as if she did not know the date of her death and when it was finally the year of her death, a large wave of sorrow overtook her. When her last week came around, she spent every moment with either her husband or her children trying to soak up each minute that she will not have in the future with her loved