Year after year, there are people we know who pass away and leave our physical world to the vast infinite cosmos only they can know about. We hear of friends and relatives who succumb into illnesses, or have lived long enough to want another day on earth. Thus, they willingly take that last trip down the road and disappear forever. We do mourn for them, true. We feel deep sadness as the ones left behind. But, the impact is not as deep as losing a person who is next of kin, or who has been nearest to our emotional core. Like a mother, or a child.This week, two of our relatives passed away on the same day. The son died earlier, and the mother died too, a few minutes soon afterwards. They lived in different towns. But strangely, the mother who hadn’t known yet of her son’s demise, was asleep and never woke up. Just like that. As though they had a deal, a vow to walk and knock on the pearly gates of kingdom come, together.
Together. Not a day apart. Eerie, but it happened. And now, there they are, two happy souls drifting above, looking down on their nearests and dearests. He was 65 and she, 85. Although they were at the ages when death seemed fated and inexorable, the circumstances of their departure, is enough to shake me up and remind me (again) of our stark mortality. How, in the grandest scheme of things, we can be blown off the face of the earth in a single breath of sickness, or accident---creating, thus, our life’s conclusion.
Fortunately, we can lessen our chances of meeting an uneventful end, by being cautious and vigilant of what we eat and what we do to our bodies. We can veer ourselves into safety at all times, or create miracle concoctions to prolong our youth and extend our lives. Unfortunately, we are still faced with the fact that we are but transient beings, and that physical death is preordained. There’s no escaping it. We may try to meander around its curves and turns, or sometimes even cheat it. But at the end is the same cul-de-sac, the same blind alley that we will fatally collide with. We can not just ever go back.
I don't mean to scare but....
But the children….I can never imagine to leave them alone. Not now. Not even if they have everything they will need materially whilst growing up. Because I have been there, a place where sadness is so profound that nothing else can mend it or alleviate it, except death itself.
And yet do I hold supremacy over it to say no? Maybe in principle yes.
But words are ever so empty when Death’s black mantle finally comes closing in…
written 9.12.06
