Page 20 - Seniors Today - April Issue
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I respect and admire and have known for spouse of the departed and the condoler
decades, was in the penultimate moments in me – the common cause being a much
of life and hanging on to life by a thread. beloved person who was taken away by
The devastated spouse, remarkably stoic, the divine call. The departed’s life journey
was in touch with me and it was heart was celebratory; if so, should not a life so
rending moments to say the least – to well lived be also celebrated on the final
hear about the excruciating pain of the journey? Requiem, if at all, should be a
person, the uselessness of medicines, the private play of affection and not a public
frailty of life, the curtain call of life and our display of grief.
complete helplessness in the situation. At Many of us would have experienced the
such times, empathy has to come to the ambivalence of feelings and thoughts at
fore and take precedence over the support such moments and I am sure each of us
of heart and mind. The receiver’s state of would have done what one was comfortable
mind tends to be very fragile during such with at those moments. At the end of the
moments and it is important that they day, there is no right or wrong – in life or
feel, and not hear, what we have to say. I death. After all, if we have enjoyed the
quite simply preferred to be brief in words pirouette of life, we should not dread the
and eloquent in silence. We were both dance of death. Just be present, for the past
silently praying that the person’s pain is gone and the future is yet to arrive.
should end. Expectedly, the end came soon I can vividly imagine my departed friend
after, thanks to the divine’s benevolence. reading this and smiling in agreement,
Again, the commiseration was very sitting comfortably in a high chesterfield
brief and the silence more eloquent. The gorging on mangoes, the favourite Indian
connect of the heart was felt both by the summer fruit.
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