Embrace the Life in Death
How Will I Ever Get Out of This Labyrinth?
Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.
— Oprah Winfrey
Background
I have been wanting to write about death for a long time. I have been very intrigued by the very idea of death ever since I was a kid. But every time I picked up my pen to write about this, I could only pen down three to four lines and then as some darkness would overtake me, I would feel a shudder and I would stop writing, every single time. I used to think it would take an enlightened soul to write about something so convoluted and unfathomable like death. Thus after some time, I stopped writing altogether, I stopped even jotting those 3–4 lines because I thought that I could never be able to do justice to anything I write about death.
Even right now, if you check the stories I have been putting out on medium, you’ll realise that almost all of them have ‘death’ as a theme in the most subtle manner. It wouldn’t be an understatement if I call myself a victim of thanatophobia (fear of death) and gerascophobia (fear of ageing).
I feel this story is a sum up of everything I have written so far on Medium.
Trying to define death
Britannica defines “Death, the total cessation of life processes that eventually occurs in all living organisms. The state of human death has always been obscured by mystery and superstition, and its precise definition remains controversial, differing according to culture and legal systems.”
Huh, I wish defining death was so easy. I’m really not trying to make this story heart touching or something but just trying to explain the fragility of the whole humanity.
I have read extensively about death. Be it Sadhguru’s Death which gives you a yogic insight into death. Be it Paul Kalaniti’s When breath becomes air or Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal. Be it Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie, where Morrie has a more realistic take, inspired by Buddhism.
Everyone knows that they are going to die, but nobody believes it. Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.
— Morrie
The Bhagavad Gita has spoken extensively about the immortality of the atman (soul). Life and death are the two sides of the very same coin. It says you need not grieve either for the living or the ones dead.
Everyone will always be here.
It has been said that all these bodies inhabited by the soul are capable of destruction. But the soul is eternal, incapable of being destroyed and incapable of being established through proof.
In the following quote, This refers to atman.
This is never born, nor does it ever die. This does not come into existence because it has been born. This has no birth, it is eternal and without destruction. It has no end. When the body is killed, this is not killed.
Now again, this is not some discovery, you already know this.
Real talk
I honestly don’t know what am I going to gain by being so dead honest with myself but let’s just be.
Every time, someone close to me or even distant to me passes away from this idea called Earth it renews and brings again into play my whole nightlong discussions with myself under the night sky about the fascinating and intriguing idea of death. I begin to question life itself, “Why does death even exist? Who will cry when I die?” as always and it takes a lot of resolve to put a full stop to that never-ending thought chain but it gets renewed again, every time I hear somebody passing on. Ever since I was a child, I remember I was very afraid of death and might I say blood because I somehow had linked it to death. I hated visiting hospitals, even when my own grandmother was admitted. It did really take me a lot of courage to go to the hospital. The whole concept of hospital spiked all hairs on my body, the fear was unreal and surreal and still somewhat is. I was in a Convent school and so praying was something that was inculcated since early ages, we used to recite Psalm 91 every day as the prayer for protection.
Ever since kindergarten to around grade seven; I remember praying to God daily asking him not to let anyone or anything harm my loved ones, I used to tell him to just take care of this selective set of people whom I deemed as the most important people in my life. It used to be a little prayer at night or anytime when I used to get paranoid: God please don’t let anything happen to them. I used to think I’m some privileged being and people whose name I would take will get angelic protection and nothing will happen to them. They would always be secure, they would always be with me by my side no matter what, even time wouldn’t be able to snatch them away from me. But all this, all of my deep faith and belief system was shook and broken when my grandmother passed away when I was in grade seven.
My tryst with death
Yes, I am well aware of the fact that I used the word ‘tryst’ here.
My Dadiji (grandmother) loved me more than anyone, I still have her affectionate gaze rooted in my head, so pure, so beautiful, so high you can’t get above it, so deep you can’t get under it, so wide you can’t get around it…that kind of love can’t be articulated, it’s selflessly selfless, it is that kind of love that can encompass the entire universe. It is like she was directing all the love in the universe to me and me alone. I would not be able to fill myself with even an iota of it, that uncontainable love that is ever-growing.
Even as a pre-teen, I was a nightmare. I used to be very rude to her at times when we used to fight to watch TV. I wanted to watch my cartoons and she wanted to watch her serials. I feel really bad now that I think of it.
I still remember she used to cry straight nights in a row if my mom ever beat me for my mischiefs. Like if she heard me crying from my room, she would wreak havoc on my mother and bash every goddamn person who made her beloved grandson cry. No one….no one could harm her beloved grandson.
She suffered too much in her life, she dealt with too many ailments, from elephantiasis to liver cirrhosis to cancer. Never once do I remember her being upset about any of it. Her relentless ability to not give up & her want to want to live, her willpower… I don’t think I can ever be even a bit as strong as she was even if I try my very best. But the point being, we knew her days were numbered and we really did our very best, we did…but still there’s this feeling that something more could be done that does haunt me at times. She would often tell me how much she loved me, she used to tell me that mere jaane ke baad tu mujhe yaad karega meaning you’ll remember me after I pass on.
It’s been 8 years since she passed on and many days go by, without me remembering her. I don’t remember her every day, many days in fact when I’m caught up with something. The whole concept of death and remembrance is so beautifully brought out in the movie Coco, it almost got me into tears, I just could relate so much to all of it.
But my intent behind narrating you all of this is that I regret that I still don’t remember her each day, I do but no every day. Yes, I feel extremely ashamed to admit this. She had that faith in my love for her that I would remember her, I couldn’t do just one single thing she expected of me, just one thing she wanted from me. I do try, believe me, I do.
Dissecting death
Death is so strange, the person who dies, we don’t know what happens to them, if there is an afterlife or if all of this is an endless cycle of rebirth, we don’t know. But what I know for sure is it breaks people into small pieces who are left behind, only for a while but it does. Death is harder for people who get left behind. I think death is bliss for the one experiencing it but hell for the ones who lose their loved ones.
In this circus of life, we forget what things are of real meaning to us. We have the gift of life, isn’t that something to be grateful for. Some people want more seconds with their loved ones on the deathbed. We are so engrossed in our little useless world that we aren’t able to see the bigger picture.
This world is an irony where
Some people wanna live, they die to live; some people wanna die, they are dead, alive.
So we could just balance it out and all will be happy but…Nobody gets what they want.
Happiness is not the ultimate goal if you be happy all the time then there’s no happiness. Happiness only has its worth in presence of sadness.
We concern ourselves with such petty things, people are ending their lives for reasons that may seem trivial to us but aren’t. But everything is survivable, we are strong enough to not let anything kill us. We can fail, just don’t ever give up. Hold on and hold strong, reach out but don’t let suicide kill you.
Lasting thoughts
The inevitability of death is known by everyone but accepted by none. Grieving is good and necessary. Giving a person the needed time to grieve for a loss of a loved one is important but once you have felt that you need to bring a different perspective to it. The notion of Deathday, celebration of death, portrayed in some films like The Sky is Pink really did appeal to my heart. We may not have the privilege or the curse to know when we will die.
Death is gonna stalk all of us.
We are not important, none of us is. We are just a speck of dust in this consistently expanding universe and even in all the other parallel ones. I mean no offence to anyone, but whosoever you are, if you don’t wake up tomorrow the world is gonna go just as fine or even better without you because of population concerns. Because the show must go on and it is gonna go on, it is not gonna stop for anyone or everyone, even if you’re running it. So don’t worry about who will cry when you die, instead of cry out of happiness until you are alive in this simulation. Don’t be too serious about life. All of us here are short of fucks, we don’t have an unlimited supply of fucks, so give them sparingly. Ultimately a dog is gonna bark all the time but heeding that dog is your call to make. You better keep barking for eternity cause I’m not gonna feed you.
John Green in his novel which is one of my favourite books Looking for Alaska summed up exactly how I feel.
That she just becomes some distant memory? Is that you want me to do when you die, for me to forget you? Because the bodies are gonna keep piling up, and the longer I live, the more people that I know will die. And do I even have enough space in my memory for all of them? And what does it matter anyway? Someday, no one will remember she even existed, or that I did. Everything falls apart…memories too. And then you’re left with nothing, not even a ghost but its shadow.
There is a part of her greater than the sum of her knowable parts. And that part has to go somewhere, because it cannot be destroyed. Energy is never created and never destroyed.
Thomas Edison’s last word words were, “It’s very beautiful over there.”
I don’t know where there is, but I know it’s somewhere, and I hope it’s beautiful.
I love reading depressive stuff, stories with abrupt endings, stories about loss, all kinds of sad stuff which leaves a void in you, you long for that one more page in that novel that seems to have been lost, you miss the feeling of completeness. That uneasy, depressing, dark feeling is something I want to get used to. I think if I do that when something of the sort actually happens to me and it is bound to happen, it will lessen the pain and the impact of the blow, I’ll be less broken but we all know that’s a lie and I’m gonna have to bear my share of suffering and pain. We all love some people, we are attached to them and their passing on is gonna leave us shook, so we are bound to face this situation sooner or later; and no matter what you do, you can not prepare yourself for it.