What exactly is death? It is a forever ache no medicine can heal. It is a pit in the stomach nothing can fill. It is a loss that makes the soul still.
Yes, we all know that we all are mortal. Yes, death is inevitable. Yet it is terrible to know that the kind touch would never be felt. That face, much loved, can never be seen again. A simple handshake you were quite casual about would never be repeated ever.
In a way, the dead depart once, but for those left behind to carry on living, something dies inside, and reviving/revitalising that within is quite tough. Death is a wild regret, too, for " words left unsaid/ and deeds left incomplete and undone" as opined Harriet Stowe whose critique of the slavery led to sweeping reforms, nay, to the end of the slavery as Abraham Lincoln would say.
Hence, despite Donne's much celebrated paradoxical reassurance in his sonnet, namely, "Death, thou shalt die", I prefer his sermon which insists, "No man is an island, entire of itself. Everyman is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." Every death diminishes every one, each end finishes all!
Pratima@ True, we should remember the happy memories of the departed rather than grieve. Well, it is this silly heart which chooses not to listen to the clever head!
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