Oh God, Alaska, I love you. I love you, " and the Colonel whispered, "I'm so sorry, Pudge. I know you did, " and I said, "No. Not past tense." She wasn't even a person anymore, just flesh rotting, but I loved her present tense.

John Green
About This Quote

This is a beautiful piece about the loss of a loved one. This is also about the fact that we can never know what will happen to us in the future and how we react to such things such as death. The paragraph is broken into three parts (the first, second and third paragraphs). The first paragraph is about how Nelson Mandela was able to endure the death of his wife, Winnie.

He realized that she was not alive anymore and she was nothing more than "flesh rotting." But rather than retreat and allow himself to fall apart, he found a way through her death and continued on with his life. But this is not something we can all do as it can be too hard for some people. The second paragraph is about the way that people react after their loved ones have passed away.

In this case, it is a man who has just lost his wife who believes that she had been alive since they first got married. In reality, she was nothing more than a corpse by this point in time. But he still believes she was completely alive until this day and so he calls her every day despite being dead for many years now.

The third paragraph describes how a woman named Alaska went through a similar experience after losing her husband Duncan on 9/11. She believes that Duncan was still around because he survived the plane crash but he has been gone for years now. Despite all of these similarities between Duncan's and Alaska's stories, there are some key differences as well.

For example, Duncan was not able to keep up with Alaska after she lost him as she was always trying to find him or talk about him over the phone with her children. And Alaska has also been unable to move on from Duncan's death as it still affects her life today even though he has been gone for over a decade now.

Source: Looking For Alaska

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