My encounter with death

Death and a dead person can shake you up like no living being ever can. I learnt this first hand, couple of weeks ago when I lost a cousin who also happened to be my good friend. And, the fact that the death was neither natural or accidental, doubled the tragedy.

The death of this guy plunged me into shock and grief like I've never known before. I felt(still feel) a pall of gloom engulf me and stir memories and emotions on a scale that I just could not control. This was a guy who was a part of my life, with whom I had shared stories, life's experiences and gossip in my teenage years. Then, for close to a decade, I had lost touch with him. Life's routine chores and other human priorities were the culprits, as usual. And, now that he is gone, I feel like there is a gaping hole in my life; an emptiness I feel I should have filled with answers for several questions about his life in the past decade.

My encounter with this loss of a life is not the first, but all the ones I've experienced before somehow did not have this effect on me; may be because those people were not so close to me or because their deaths were natural. Also, this time I somehow saw the various angles to such an incident. The grief and pain of the loss vying for space with the rumor mill working overtime to put a reason to his sudden death and the consequences of his passing away. I felt the pain of the other people who were grieving equally or more than me. I could see how one person's life affects several other people's lives in many different ways. While I was grieving as a friend, there was his wife grieving for the loss of the love of her life, his parents crest fallen over the loss of a beloved son, his brothers shocked at the passing away of a sibling with whom they had shared the ups and downs of their childhood and adulthood.

I can now understand this email that has been doing the rounds in the internet for a long time (about a guy who kept thinking of calling his friend daily but never got around to doing it until one day he learns the friend is no more) much better as I feel exactly like that man. A person who lost an opportunity to connect with a human being who was once a dear friend. I could go on grieving endlessly because I still haven't been able to come to terms with my loss. However, I have chosen to stop because I want the lesson from this incident to sink in. I want everyone reading this blog to think about all that I have said and realize that what or who you take for granted today may not be there for you tomorrow.