Exceptionalism

All lives, the wise among us say
are unique. Except some more
so than others. There is only one
tried soul whom his obituary
can identify as the final survivor
of the Treblinka death camp, now
too gone. Some among us live
double lives reflecting dissatisfaction
with the reality of their own. They
dream of winning a lottery to
free them of financial cares
solving all the ills their lives have
ever confronted them with. Little
knowing, much less caring that
the lottery of life was theirs not 
to have been born a Jew in pre-1935 
Europe. That last survivor lived
his own double life, that of
normalcy after liberation from
death from a living nightmare
that deprived him of those he loved.
And the live memory of a lifetimes-
worth of horror. Now, laid to rest
both his lives have surrendered to
obliteration in mortality's due time
of human reckoning, nature-designed.