Death

I was attending a funeral of a distant relative recently. I had never seen him in person or in photographs. Just knew that he was 45 and died of sudden heart attack and has left behind his wife and two children as family.
I must admit I was a child when I attended my grandmother’s funeral and then didn’t have much idea what it is all about and fortunately never attended anyone else’s funeral till date. And so only was in a very difficult state of mind when I went to attend this funeral of someone whom I didn’t even know.

There were people, lots of them , all dressed in black who had come to pay their last respects. After the church service, when the body was taken to the cemetery for burial, it all started…. There was a lot of crying and screaming and a wanting not to let go…His brother collapsed and so did his wife…I didn’t see any of it coz I was at the back of the crowd…. Just heard it… and it somehow made me emotional too… When everyone had paid their respects, his wife was brought to do the same… with a body so weak, a mind even weaker, she stood there…im sure she had all those memories about him flashing by, yet had to bid him goodbye and this time forever… the grief in her eyes, the pain in her heart was so evident… and then came the children… they stood there, looking at their dad for the last time, thinking of how he nurtured them and made them who they are today… and then the daughter just blew a flying kiss with shivering hands into where his body laid still… and a tear dropped from my eyes….

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live. It is to muster up the courage to live without our beloved ones. Death can only end a life, not a relationship. Love is stronger than death even though it can’t stop death from happening, but no matter how hard death tries, it can’t separate people from love. It can’t take away the memories either. In the end, life becomes stronger than death. We learn to live without them being a part of our daily lives, we tend to achieve more than what we thought we could never do on our own- but its coz we still love them and their love gives us the strength.