Musings On Death

Musing on death as someone I knew, died today. Death had not come easy to him. He had faced the debilitating cruelty of aging, the sapping of strength, mobility, memory. An inexorable fading away, slow but sure. His shell lay there, the empty body, while his spouse of many decades, reminisced, sobbing and smiling alternatively, weaving between memories of the past and loss in the present. His children, busy making arrangements had no time to grieve. People coming and going, phones being worked, rounds of coffee being provided by the neighbours, I watched life swirl around death. He looked incongruous lying there. Still, pale, motionlessness in sharp contrast to the bustle around him. The warrior had left, his battle done. His wife told me that for the last one month, he had only spoken of his parents and siblings who had passed on. He had not recognized any of the living.
They say, there is no type of wood which does not finally burn. I think of the fire which is inherent in wood.This fire which flares, smoulders and burns to ashes.The outer burning is merely a ritual.

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Fading eyesight, greying hair, creaking joints, wrinkling skin, vanishing memory. Death is not an unwelcome visitor. It cohabits with life. I had attended once, a session by a Buddhist monk on death absorption meditation. Birth is the manifestation of the five elements - earth, water, fire, air, ether from the heart centre as the body with its various systems(circulatory-water, digestive-fire, respiratory-air, ether-mind). Death is the absorption of these into the heart centre. Aging is nothing but the gradual absorption of elements. Disease only hastens the process. Dying is as ongoing, as natural a process as living.