Making Peace with Death

It’s inevitable. One day, we shall all close our beautiful eyes, our lips shall turn blue, our limbs unusually cold, and tomorrow shall be no more.

The beauty of life is that despite its guaranteed tragic end, it’s worth living nevertheless. For reasons unknown, we find ourselves craving to see yet another day die and yet another day rise still. We expect to see the same faces, and smiles, and share in the occasional laughter, and many a time tears with our loved ones.

And when it comes calling, when we least expect as usual; and it takes with it a dearly beloved one; someone close to us; death becomes an ugly reality. We are never the same again.

When Papa died in 2010, some part of me died along with him. When Isabel died two years later, and then Lilly a year later, I was utterly crushed. Until Pa’s death, I had buried Grandma, and nearly a dozen close relations and friends.

Music, poetry, and lots of crying helped. Most important, sharing and listening even more tragic stories friends and others had had to endure. In the end, I made peace with death. I switched careers and joined Medical School. The long hours I spend with cadavers learning anatomy were especially useful.

We all die. And we become things. Things like chairs, tables, and mats…that decay, rot away, and nurtures and nourish other living things.

As we struggle with pain, mourning, and grieving, life need not lose its meaning. For a season and a reason here we are. To love, laugh, cry, hope, despair many a time and still find enough reasons to keep hope alive.

We should use each and every single minute to give others and ourselves a good reason to continue living. The truth is it never hurts to be kind. Kind to strangers. Kind to animals. Kind to perceived enemies. Life’s a journey that must end and should we meet along the way, let’s be kind to each other. Cheers!