When I am dead, my dearest..

Death isn't a good enough distraction.

Someone died. I did not. Nevertheless, I will too. But something struck me hard a few weeks back. I saw people unaffected by as eternal a loss as a death of a beloved. Not all, but some. Our lives are too beautiful, MashAllah but is death so trivial a matter to have had enough strength to have disrupted our lives for even a little a while? It scares me. Death will, one day, conquer my life too. Will I be forgotten too? So soon?

We are so deeply immersed in the mundane affairs of this life that even death fails to digress our attention. We are busy walking on our own self-centered paths without even halting for a moment to look ahead and see where it actually leads to. We want to walk. We are not concerned whither to the roads lead. Death often stands by the pavements and watches us pass by looking all blithe and unconcerned. It stands there everyday, looks at us and curls its toes. Nothing more than a bystander, is it? It feels neglected. Just like a plagued part of our lives that we have very apathetically amputated and thrown away. But the question is, can it really be amputated? And if it can be, then do we think throwing it away is enough? Do we think it cannot grow back?

It can and it does.

Death is the most concrete reality of life. If you are ALIVE, you WILL be DEAD. Sooner or later.

When I am dead, my dearest,

Sing no sad songs for me;

Plant thou no roses at my head,

Nor shady cypress tree:

Be the green grass above me

With showers and dewdrops wet;

And if thou wilt, remember,

And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,

I shall not feel the rain;

I shall not hear the nightingale

Sing on, as if in pain:

And dreaming through the twilight

That doth not rise nor set,

Haply I may remember,

And haply may forget.

--Christina Rossetti