The Elusive Meaning of Death

What does death mean?

Is it the grand finale of existence?

The step to an absolute or a ubiquitous frontier?

Or the exit from Life as we know it now

To life in the unknown corner and crevices of the existential?

Is it the limitation of man’s earthly flesh?

Without hampering the infinity of his spirit?

Is it the end to man’s vanity or feebleness?

To make him stronger in the next life?

Or doomed to oblivion?

Is it the taunting of the living?

To remind us of our powerlessness?

Our vulnerabilities?

Or is death just a new beginning

To replace all things wretched or sacred?

Is death the Darth Vader that we dread or revere?

The mind dazzler that we entertain for thrills?

Or the heart thief in the chasm of life?

To remind us we should hold onto nothing

As we eventually lose it all?

Or is death the reminder

That we should always Cherish

And Celebrate

What and Whom we hold dear

In every nanosecond of our eternal soul?

Or is death just death in and of itself?

And as humans we try to complicate it

Or extrapolate it

To explain away its dereliction

Or its jolt?

I lost my dear uncle this evening

Death took him without a javelin

Or a fight

Without bias

Without any reasoning or sagacity

Wrapped him under his cloak

Of opacity

And I know there will be no recompense

At least for me.

The encounter seem to have come and went swiftly

It forced back the memory of how death cracked my mother’s heart open

Without a sound

As if it was happenstance

It’s been 4 years now

Yet I am still reeling from that blow

So as I lay mourning

Scattered and broken

My breathing uneven and whipping

In my bewildered suffering

I speak now, because I will not hold my peace.

And so I ask myself

And you

Though I know we will all have conflicting elucidations

What’s the meaning of death my friend?

P.S. Had hoped to have published this before midnight, but fell asleep in my tears.

Only to awake and find the pain is still here and death on this eve is still real.

In memory of Uncle Bunny who passed away on his verandah in Jamaica: September 18, 2015.

Credits: Creative Commons images courtesy of Sabrina Campagna (1st image)  and Jun “D” Phan (2nd image).