Friday, December 11, 2015

The Saga of Death: Year End Saga (II)

I just did not want to write another post about death.
Death is about loss, something that I had experienced a lot (losing my loved ones, one after the other) and I had hoped that it would be a long time before this happened again.

To be fair, it was more than 10 years. It has been me who has been trying to hold time, and hoping that time doesn't affect me.

My grandmother (Dadi), the glue of my family left us for heavenly abode last week. It has been a tremendous loss to our family and while we know and understand that she was almost 85, that she had seen and lived her life fully, the emptiness of not having her around to constantly remind us to have breakfast, or to wake up, or in general being snarky is going to take a lot of time to get used to.

While we were just getting out of this shock, we received the news of my father's childhood friend just collapsing while on a walk. He was in Australia and he was not very old.

While we cope with our loss, we are also made to think, and made to realise how precious life is, that how important it is to let go of our egos and hold on to the things that just make us angry.

It is so important that we think about what is it that we would want in our life, whether it is accumulation of wealth or accumulation of loving relationships, with family and friends that would last us beyond our days of partying and drinking.

Dadi has left behind a family that is cohesive but also pretty fragile. Our inner strengths and power plays are going to be tested, and eventually (mostly willfully) some of us would have to compromise on the behaviour of the other. It is a long road ahead, and all of us can only hope.

The lessons in life, often, are not restricted to life alone. Even in death the wise leave behind the lessons that we most hold on to. 

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