I have used this line a lot. I used to add one more certain
fact to it, that my best friend from Grad school will be late. You could count on him
being late by half an hour at least for anything, be it meeting at the Y-point
for going to a class or a movie.
I recently experienced the death of a family
member. I always treat death very serenely. My first heartfelt experience of it
was at the age of 20. A close friends father had died in a tragic accident. The
friend was brave enough to face it all through all alone. We were class mates.
He topped his GRE scores a week later. I remember that evening however. We
stood there silently holding hands, silent tears dropping by. Both of us
pretending to be brave. I cried profusely when I came home and narrated the
horrible hour, that we spent seeing his fathers body burn. I never forgot that
night. Every time there is a death, and I have seen many by now, I remember
that sweaty hand in my hand and the helplessness in our eyes.
Something has gone wrong with the world since then. Every
funeral or prayer meeting that I have attended after that has become more and
more casual. The affairs have become more ritual than spiritual and the people
more cavalier. I admire the pragmatism of people who are very well behaved with
a stiff upper lip and can go about their routine life like nothing major has
happened, after the death of a dear one, but to actually dismiss the incident
is outrageous. And that too at the prayer meeting. They have become more of a
social gathering and people have started treating them as another excuse to have
some normal chit chat. Where is the respect for the dead gone?
I can understand if there are efforts done to bring the
family out of the shock and the impact of the event, but to actually crack
jokes, laugh and greet people by saying,” Hey, how are you? Long time no see.”
I wonder if they wanted some relative to die every month so that they could
meet more regularly. Where have we lost our sensitivity? Since when did we
start accepting a permanent loss so easily? I have seen people get sadder over
the dropping of a daily soap character. Have we misplaced and misdirected our
emotions so radically? The saddest part was that I didn’t even see a single eye
that had dried out by crying too many tears. I still shudder on remembering
that night 15 years ago, and here I was within a roomful of people and somehow
only I had the decency to not laugh at some stupid joke cracked by someone at the gathering.
All of us face the loss of someone important at one point or
another. The people we lose are the ones that have taken a lot of efforts to be
there for us and make us what we are today. Even if we cannot acknowledge that
or reciprocate that, I implore all to not let that little sensitivity die. Someday,
when our time comes, and we would be looking outside from a glass photo frame,
we might like to see a few tears more or at least hear a few laughs lesser.
