Death is a weighty subject, one that mortal minds prefer to glaze over and ignore. When it visits, it greets its hosts with a hefty blow, shattering the aura of normalcy that surrounds everyday life. It’s a tragic visitor, walking in by kicking the door open and letting in the cold wind of altered reality.
Its blow deals a hefty damage on the soul and it’s the living who suffer death’s injury more. In the case of the singular death it reverberates through a family bond. Many deaths all at once is a headline in the news for a week. For the casualties of war, the numbers care more about the advances of the sides who’ve collided in a show of martial might. Regardless of the proportion of detached souls, the shockwaves are life’s problem.
How Death Shapes the Living Experience
Death is a cruel taskmaster. For one, its arrival usually spurs the unharmed into some action or the other. It stinks up the room, reminding the breathing that life is fickle and procrastination will only ease your struggles if you live to see the problems on a later date.
For most its quick shot of depressive serum knocks down the spirit such that for a varying period of time one feels dead too, hollowed out but rattling with life’s breath. From that rattling dead-space, a million epiphanies ring out. Eulogies to the dead, deep words of comfort to the living, new ways to sorrow over memories spent, a thousand new regrets on what you’d have done better to ease their passing. For the young who die a mix of emotions about their short lives and even shorter periods of impact permeate the grieving atmosphere.
Nobody knows how to properly celebrate an early passing. Most times, you wonder what’s to celebrate. The early death has no time to live properly before the light of their life flashes out.
A Deadly Depression
Death reorders the houses it walks into. A need to fill the void left by the departed. Clothes find their ways into donation baskets. Effigies in memory of their presence enter some sanctified corner. Furniture is packed up and new use is found for what the dead once occupied. It’s a new kind of hell, going through the effects of the departed. In the grieving mind come all the instances those effects were the central standpoint of a thousand conversations. New reasons to revise all those instances to no avail come unbidden and Death laughs at the attempt.
For many, the mere sight of the departed beloved’s paraphernalia serves as a knife to the soul. Only the cleansing wash of a thorough burning can soothe the ache of their melancholy. All the pieces of identity committed to a conflagration that feels like their touch in some way, fleeting but final, removing the emotional attachment of the dead from their personal items. From the ashes come new room to build better memories and hope that the sting of death finds some distant door to kick open.
The Variance of Grief
Death’s impact dictates the actions of the living in a myriad of ways. For some, it’s an excuse to try something new: a trip to nowhere, a new look. Another is the uprooting of long-standing beliefs in the hope that something breathes life to the hollow inside. For others it renews belief in the hopes that one finds some purpose, a feeling that life’s worth living. It kills some, it makes some alive, it ends some ambitions, it breeds new motivation in others. Grief from death makes its imprint on life in its own way and it’s the living’s business how that goes. Furthermore, nothing prepares for death’s visit so when playing host to the reaper you decide what to serve for dinner.
My Short Opinion
For this writer, the impact of death’s touch fascinates me. The loss of a loved one has a way of emptying your bravado and sitting you face-to-face with stark reality. A brush with death can kill without taking your life in turn so it’s a virile reset of sorts. I choose to believe in the renewing nature of death because I see no point in letting loss hollow out your virtues and commit you to vices. It’s an insult to the lost and only quickens a pointless journey to the afterlife.
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Life is for living and I don’t believe that the dead will begrudge using their loss as a ladder to greater expectations and aspirations. Rather one should ensure that on the day death steals your final breath, you can meet your loved ones on the other side with your head held high and with the scars of their loss sewn up, healed and covered with medals of honor. For me, that’s the only way to justify the imprint of death- by stubbornly kicking on and wringing every value from this tree called life.
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