Writing about death is like trying to describe a fullstop — a single mark that holds the silence of entire stories. No matter how intricate, how brief or how sprawling, or how richly adorned with literary ornamentation or simply stripped bare of any sophistry… all stories — inevitably — gather before the fullstop and die at its feet.
Today, it’s been exactly a month since I lost my father. My family and I are still in a daze. It feels like a strong gust of wind uprooted our house and we are now left to fend for ourselves. Everything that is contained in the world is preciesly as it should be but reality endures only in a faint hush. Nothing seems real enough against the gaping void that my father has left behind. It’s enormous, dark and absolutely unfathomable. What’s worse is how quickly it’s been a month already!
I sit by myself every night and grieve silently in my bed. I also try to understand it. It is in our experience that people are tangible. Their existence is real and it can be felt in their presence. When a person dies — when my father died — who was it that was actually dead? Conversely, who was it that was actually alive? I think of this.
Do I grieve for the body that my brother and I cremated? That is unlikely. After the cremation, we picked his bones from the ashes in the pyre. Those bones were not familiar to me. I was familiar with the aches he had in his arms and his feet or the itch on his back which he could never reach with the aching arms. I was also familiar with the forehead that always needed massaging with some vaporub after long evenings at the nursing home. I have felt the hardness of these bones under the skin yet the bones themselves were unremarkable without the aches that were very remarkable and unique to my father. I’m not certain of it but its absurd to think that these can burn and be reduced to ash.
Then, is it the soul that I am grieving over? It is fantastic to even think that I was familiar with his soul. So, I close that line of reasoning as soon as it opens up in my mind.
Perhaps, the metaphors I developed at the beginning can come to my aid in assuaging me. A prose is not its constituent sentences, words or letters. It’s not even the ideas that the prose conveys. It is rather the quality that lingers on with the placement of every fullstop. It is the quality that continues to associate with the story long after the story is complete.
पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते।।
Om Shanti ❤️
In the bogs and in the rocks,
where the furtive heron trots,
silence doth often humbles in surrender,
for a croak or a pallid echo render,
will yet undo the stillness of the moment.
And though the heron stands in watch of caution meant,
greatly will unfold its feathered palms,
and the wind it shall manhandle into whistle psalms,
until upon a clearing of earnest peace,
it shall rest once more for a resting lease.
Such is the way the burden falls on most,
alike on the pruden heron that surveys with cost
the paddles of its purview within a lighting grasp,
but always keeping that earful rasp,
to the warnings of the jungle,
which often threaten to entangle,
the well intended with the ill offended.
But the heron, ever mindfully fended,
will achieve these three unhapped.
It will gather the fish engulped,
will feed its young anested,
and upon imparting the lesson tested,
at apex high will the heron fly,
like a searing mark atop the burning sky.
Behind it, the heron will leave alone a wind,
which will carry that learned speed,
and follow, will its nestlings, upon a time,
will sear they too the sky, in their climb,
for they need themselves to feel the rush agusted,
and hunt they too the fish unfasted,
trotting along the bogs with care,
stand they also with expecting stare,
resembling the hero heron,,
who taught them the way they now step on.