There is a lot of poetry that has been written personifying death. In fact, one of my favorite poems - "Prospice", does just that. Why I love that poem though is because of how Browning romanticizes death, stands up to it and refuses to let its coldness and its inborne fear to touch him... because he has hope to meet his love who had passed away through Him - the mighty dark knight - death, has now become the deliverer of love and promise..
Death has been on my mind - perhaps with so much of it happening around me. It's cast its dark shadow around us more oft than not with every year that goes by. Though what marks my mind is not the incident of death but the life that has ceased to exist.
A man's life is chronicled by so many events which when comes to an end - it feels more and more like fading dreams you desperately try to remember. Growing up, accomplishments, graduating, first job, first date, getting married, having kids - its like a story-book we all go through where each one of us is the protagonist and our own villains too. A chronicled life that we publish through our words, our actions and hope that it continues on with our essence when we no longer can pen down any more.
It's a huge responsibility to keep that life going on - to keep that person going on. That complex person with their moods and opinions, their wisdom and their laughter... it suddenly becomes so spread out between all who they have met. Between desires and regrets and the players who spent a moment on their stage of life, hurting them, loving them - admiring them, despising them - whatever role you have, you steal that part of the person, that memory and those drops of life which exist only in your mind.
The battle of life and death continues even after - because just by having lived your life - you have handed pieces of it off to the soldiers who survive you in the battlefield of memory and recollection. Death only defeats the body, not the memories nor the spirit that is as strong and real as we remember it.
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute's at end, and the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave,
Shall dwindle, shall blend, shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain and then a light...
- From "Prospice" Robert Browning
I too, like Richa (I wonder how that name is pronounced) and Browning, hope that deaths seeming finality is compromised. That what we view as the darkest realm is in fact merely a furtherance. In the meantime I'll try to keep her words as listed here as instruction, to do my best to recall the many nuances of those to whom I was close and who have preceded me. It is indeed too easy to let them become a 'fading dream'. I hope for the same consideration. If I fail to comment on future blogs Richa, remember me as a faithful follower, if Anonymous.
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