Ashes to ashes, dust to dust! It is the eternal truth. You come and you go; it doesn’t matter how you come and how you go. Life and death signify the beginning and the end of a circle. And when you leave, you are reborn, some say. Because they say your soul is immortal.
“vasamsi jirnani yatha vihaya, navani grhnati naro ‘parani, tatha sarirani vihaya jirnany, anyani samyati navani dehi“
(As a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones, similarly the soul accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and useless ones).
I do not know about soul or about being reborn like a tree growing from a seed buried in the dirt. But I do know our genes continue its eternal journey from one body to another using our mortal body as its carrier. Some call it the selfish gene. But as a mortal, death is the end of one’s earthly existence no matter how much we philosophize. We are saddened when someone leaves. But death is not contagious. So, we go on. Life goes on until the end of its time when death completes the circle.
Death, not birth, is the greatest mystery of life. It comes in many ways. You don’t know how, where, and when it will come to you. Death – is it the end? It is sad to think that there is nothing after that, no more feelings, laughter, sorrow, love, anger, fear – nothing, absolutely nothing. Or is there something? Words like immortal soul, reincarnation are simply appear to be hogwash to make mortals feel better. Death is inevitable, yet we go on as if it will never happen to us. We don’t even know what the next moment will bring. That is the nature’s way. I suppose if we knew the future, life will stop functioning even when we are living. Once you acknowledge death, or experience the pain of watching the demise of someone close, you learn not to be afraid of the shadow of death. You feel the loss, but it cannot break you anymore.
When I was growing up in another time, in another land, I had witnessed many deaths, starting with the death of my disabled older brother at the age of 18. For the first time in my life I had gone to the funeral place to watch a cremation in an open fire. I was barely a teenager. His body was engulfed by that devouring (un)holy fire. “Ashes to ashes”, you come alone and you go alone – a new realization had come to me. There would be no marker, no tombstone, and no trace of the deceased. The dead simply vanishes from the scene. The truth is it is the end. Just like that, my brother was gone. Thereafter, I saw many more deaths – of relatives and friends. Some died of old age, some died at child birth, some committed suicide ending a tragic love story, some drowned in the big river in front of our home as police had chased some boys having fun at Holi time. I had also seen some poor homeless and hungry soul’s dead body lying on a sidewalk with no one to mourn. So I have seen the color of death; the end is still the same. You just disappear.
Then I became an invincible (as we think in our youth) young man and left for a strange, new land chasing a dream. I thought I had left that cruel death far behind in that old place. But death knows no boundary, no race, and no religion. Like God himself or herself (Is God a man or a woman, if you believe in one), it is omnipresent. In the wee hours of March 21, 1977 my mentor, a father-figure in a distant land, Dr. Randy Blumberg, a person full of life and energy, died in a freak accident. I was with him in the car. But I wasn’t at his funeral as I was taken to a hospital. I suppose those who were present threw three shovels of dirt on his coffin following the Jewish tradition to honor the deceased. None the less, he was gone. I thought I had seen enough death before and that I could face the cruelty of death. No, I was totally broken once again. Nothing mattered to me at the time. I suppose it wasn’t my time. So, the journey continues.
The very first time I went to a funeral in the new land was in 1982. A dear friend from my college days in India and his beloved wife died in a freak accident in Ithaca, New York in a frigid, deathly winter leaving behind their only six-year old daughter. We cremated them, not in an open fire; but just the same, only a different place, different background, and in the deathly silence of those who had gathered.
Thereafter, many more died – a dear friend died in 2003 who was the life of our small community, then another friend who was my roommate during my higher studies here, then a friend’s son in his 20s had hanged himself, and a friend’s son was shot dead by his girlfriend’s father and many more. I went to a funeral of a Muslim friend who had collapsed at the airport while waiting for a shuttle bus to take him to his car. His body was lowered to the grave and someone said a few verses from the Koran that I didn’t understand. I am sure it was about frailty of life and that he was at a better place without any suffering. His relatively young wife wasn’t present. I suppose the prevailing customs would not allow a woman at the funeral site. Discrimination shows up in subtle or not so subtle way while we live in spite of our hypocritical proclamation of equality and justice for all. I went to the funeral service of the grandmother of my Jewish son-in-law. She was in her 90s and was the epitome of life. She had fled to America from Nazi-occupied France with her parents as a young girl. She lived her life of independence as a political activist, as a voracious reader, and with tremendous interest in art and culture. Only a few weeks before her death I had lunch with her at her place in Evanston, IL. Then she was gone. I was there at her burial site. Her casket was lowered. Like others, I too had offered three shovels of dirt, the last respect one can pay to the deceased. Until then I did not know the significance. Someone said a few verses in Hebrew. The body, like a seed, disintegrates only to emerge in a new form. In the case of the deceased, this will occur after the coming of the Messiah. The Hebrew word “levayah” translates as “escorting” and it may comfort relatives to think that they are not saying goodbye so much as escorting the deceased from one world into Olam HaBah, the World To Come. Regardless, she was gone.
Why talk about death and three shovels of dirt? We are in the midst of a pandemic called Corona virus. Even in death now we cannot congregate; only a very few nearest relatives are allowed. Yes, it is for our wellbeing, for the wellbeing of others so that we are not escorted out before its time. Another friend died in the midst of a pandemic; no, not from the virus. Today we witnessed his funeral, listened to the utterance of Hebrew verses, saw lowering of the casket from a distance via electronic media (Zoom) sitting solemnly at our home in front of a computer screen. I saw the wife of the deceased giving three shovels of dirt on the coffin. I saw her eyes quietly bleeding tears as she picked up the shovel. Then a few others followed her.
Yes, I have witnessed many deaths. Death ends at the graveside or at a cremation pier. Perhaps my heart has hardened with time. Tears hardly come out of my eyes. But something inside me still grieves for the loss. Death, it is truly a mystery of life. It is the mysterious end.
