Dear Death

Dear Death,

As a young child who barely knew how to put on her school uniform without indenting it with wrinkles, I never knew something like you existed much less your significance in life. All I did know was that God was kind to kind people and bad to bad people. That made me strive harder to become someone good, a better human perhaps. 

I thought this was supposed to save me from your wrath. 

But I was wrong.

I saw all these people giving up due to illnesses or old age and I used to question my self as to why you would hate these people enough to take them away from their families. Whenever my friends went on a sudden holiday from school and then return with a bald head and little to no words to share about why they had no hair, it would raise questions in my head. Questions, floating around aimlessly as I grew up enough to tie my shoelaces.

To be honest, I never understood you until recently.

I remember when my grandpa was ill. I was young with no clue to you or your connections with humankind. It was all a fairytale for me because, in those, you are supposed to live forever.

I remember when everyone was busy in managing medicines for grandpa that they forgot to push me outside and out of the 'infected ' area. So, I did what any eight years old would've done on seeing a familiar face lying withered and weak on a dull bedsheet with numerous medicine bottles lining the bedside table. I just stood there. I stood there as silent as a wooden log,  listening to his ragged laboured breathing.

And then I saw you. Sitting just as silent as me, but closer to grandpa then I was.

My god, you were beautiful. So beautiful, that I thought you represented some very important personality, or maybe God himself. But silly me, I didn't know your purpose at that time. Your skin was the colour of expensive porcelain and that midnight suit you wore could've been mistaken for a normal one unless the silvery inscriptions that decorated the black Canvas hadn't been there. The blood, pieces of shattered glass stuck on your suit hadn't been there. But still, you looked as graceful as a morning. Bright in unspoken, unrealistic ways.

I watched your pale hand caress Grandpa's cheek ever so softly. It was an act of affection but the painful screech that left my grandpa's lips soon after made it look otherwise. I was ready to shout. I was ready to yell at you. I was ready to fight for the man lying in pain even when I didn't know why he was. Or you were. I remember. But I didn't. 

Because your teary eyes said something else, Death.

The thin streaks of tears cascading down your pale cheeks were enough to make me rethink my actions. And then you glanced at my small figure standing in the shadows of the door. I was confused, yes. But somehow the soft warmth in your eyes was enough to make me oblivious to my own feelings.

I watched you still. A pained smile graced your lips and the tears still slid down in clear streams out of the warmth of your eyes. Who were you to cry for him? Was he your grandpa too?

I didn't know.

And soon after that, I was standing in the midst of wails and cries. All those people running after medicines had stopped completely. Some sat consoling the closer ones while the closer ones had gone utterly ballistic. Then, mum told me. My fairytale life was long gone by now. A deep resentment settled itself within me. The utter betrayal I felt at that moment despite being an eight-year-old was overwhelming. 

Your beauty, your capturing attire and those tears had betrayed me. 

So, I blamed you. 

I blamed you and your cold heart for taking away someone so dearest to me while all I did was stand and watch you snatch him away from us.

I would've been in deep resentment still if I hadn't witnessed you on one more occasion. That being my Aunt's. And yet again there I watched you cry. But I couldn't stand and watch it this time. I couldn't just watch you snatch her away as well.

I still remember I had asked you, "Why give pain if it makes your own eyes burn? Or maybe you fake it?"

You gave me that familiar sad smile with all those tears glistening in your warm eyes and said "The pain is essential for the memories to fade away from the mind. Would you rather die every day in the agony of the human feelings you want to take with you or remember the pain so deep that it's all you remember of before life? And for the fake part, the parent fakes nothing".

I didn't understand it at the moment. 

Nor did I understand it while you kissed my aunt to sleep.

It was when another round of wails and cries surrounded me, that I understood the bond of love between life and you. Life serves, cares, nurtures each and every one of her children like a mother. And then the hardest part is left for you, to make your own children learn the art of removing the old and making way for the new.

I'm sure I'll see you again. Your beautiful porcelain white skin and the silvery inked suit. In all your glory and gracefulness, I'll be watching you once again caress one of your children. The tears and the sad smile adding to your evergreen beauty to love them with an unfathomable intensity.

This fairytale isn't just broken for us. Now I understand the meaning of the blood splatters on your midnight suit as well as the broken glass sticking to it.