Perhaps we forget that death will come to us like a hunter
riding a horse and gallop away taking us on with it. Perhaps we don’t want to
remember that we must die one day or the other. No matter what, death shall
come in disguise and abduct us faraway, millions of hills back. Like the
replication of vampires and the zombies, death will have been searching us
everywhere, every time. Sometimes concealing in the depth of opportunities;
sometimes flowing from the smile and sometimes as an adversity, death shall
come to us.
The greatest philosopher
Socrates wrote, “The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways I to
die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows”. One day we bid farewell
to the world we have loved to stay, living behind our family, property and the
worldly materials. Like a trail of our legs, we fade from the heart of mortals
as time passes by and nothing but history remains untold. Whether it is good
that we are dying or it is bad that we are living, no one but god knows it.
We don’t want to die yet have
to die. “We have no armour against fate” as the great poet James Shriley writes
in his poem, Death the
Leveler. No matter how strong, how fit we are, we are ultimately the
subjects of death. Sick or healthy; giant or tiny; black or white; King or peasant;
male or female; Happy or sad-everyone shall be treated equally. “From soil we
came and to the soil we return”, as bible unfolds.
The great Nepalese
writer and poet Dr Krishna Hari Baral writes on death, which can be translated
very roughly as:
“No one has a desire to die,
Yet there isn’t a moment
That slips off without our
death.
No matter where we escape,
There isn’t a place mortals
won’t die”.
Every minute I am reminded of
death, I get a chill run over my spinal cord raising my heartbeats. As I lie on
the bed late night, a sad gust of feeling stir my mind and shakes my life. I
imagine the times in future when we are on the verge of closing the eyes and
squeeze out every molecule of oxygen, how suffocations will prevent us from
uttering the words we desire. We will have our near and dear ones sobbing and
mourning; some people not even believing we are summoned by death. “Nothing
will happen to you, my dear. We will not let you die”. These are the soothing
words those loved ones will speak. They give us a new desire to live. We wish,
then, we never died. It is at that time we remember millions of things in short
time that we might not have been able to remember in our entire life. When we
see those healthy ones witnessing as we breathe last; we wish we were once
again alive. There will be dreams, hopes and desires that remain raw and
unfulfilled. There will be people we would love to meet for the last time yet
as fate desires, so shall it be. We die but with a desire to live long.
No one likes to leave the one
who have given us so many things to remember. Sometime I wish we could also say
like the people living, “We will always remember you”. Of what good will that
serve? Whether the dead ones are remembered or forgotten what difference will
that make? I wish when we on the dead bed, we could say, “don’t worry, I will
be back soon with lots of eatables. Until then take good care of yourselves”.
My only concern about death
is whether I will be able to see my parents and loved ones when I breathe my
last and I wish I could say, “I will be back soon”. As I think of that day,
tears fall off and I suffocate. I am afraid of death. I want to live as long as
I wish to.
