The Final Stage, If You Will.

“Why?”. Probably a question that passes through everyone’s head sometime or the other. Especially so when someone passes on.

Why do they have to leave? Why can’t they be in the same realm as we are in anymore?

Why would they leave us? Why must things come to an end?

Why?

There’s this beautiful line by Haruki Murakami in Norwegian Wood, “By living our lives, we nurture death.” I think, by living our lives, we try to answer the “Whys”.
We have always seen death as the opposite of life. Language, visuals, everything tells us or rather shows us that the opposite of life is death. False. Death can never be the opposite of life; it is but an extension. The final stage, if you will.

My paternal grandfather passed even before I was born and I’m the only one in my family who hasn’t seen him. I have always wondered what he would’ve been like. The “Why?” came up even back then to a five – six-year-old. Why couldn’t I have met him?

As time passed, naturally, I had to witness more people passing on, the difference being this time, I had seen them, I knew them, they knew me, we had developed a bond of sorts. When such people go, the intensity of the questions increase and fester longer in your head. More questions come up, emotions take over and for what feels like an eternity, you are walloped in a giant swirling wave which never seems to end.

Time heals though and the eternity eventually comes to an end. The memories stay. Some stronger than others. You want to hold on to them forever but over time you realise, you have to let them go. You start to answer your own questions as the days go by, unsure if it is the truth, but satisfied nonetheless with the same.

Some deaths are expected but hurt all the same, sometimes more, even if you knew it was coming.
Some don’t hurt so much; you are able to accept it quicker.
And some leave you scarred for life. The ones that hurt the most, the ones that were least expected, the ones you thought would be with you for as long as it is conceivable to your head.

For those, it is not even possible to comprehend the situation for the first time period, days, weeks, months whatever it may be, let alone think about framing questions. The gut-wrenching blow is just so strong for such a time frame, only the words “Why” will form in your head. That in itself conveys aplenty.

It takes time to get through ordeals like this, funny how it is the same time that gets us to the final stage too. Somehow, the idea that whatever begins must come to an end just does not seem to get through our heads in many cases and just coming to terms with that fact takes a long time. The statement is simple, its meaning is not. Facts are easy, understanding them is not.

Death is also not restricted to just a being, it is to be extended towards inanimate objects, intangible emotions and feelings, even to memories. Everything has an expiration date; we just choose to ignore it most of the time. Perhaps it is like how we ignore certain aspects of people because of our attachment with them. The fact remains that it is still there, we have just chosen to look beyond it.

We all face death at some point in our lives, it becomes a part of it. Some knock us down repeatedly until we become numb, some help us understand things better, but all of them help us grow. Difficult moments are what made people what they are today, never the easy ones. The easy moments are what we get for getting through the difficult ones.

There is no one shot solution for dealing with death, it is extremely subjective to the person and how close they were with that particular entity. However, the first step, or rather one of the steps is understanding the fact that death is not the opposite of life but an extension of it, the final stage, if you will. And as time goes by, as we approach the final horizon ourselves, perhaps we will know that death is something that needs to be embraced like a caring friend.