Perspectives of Death

“A good death in part, is one expected by those waiting.”

She was dying. Surrounded by family and friends that have come to witness her passing. They were besides themselves, she was at peace. For two days ago, she was born again; baptised into a new life by a higher power, absolved of sin and secure in her salvation. “Love.” The priest anointed her forehead “He loves you and forgives you.”

But what was there to be forgiven, she was dying of cancer.

As her breathing grew weaker, the wailing began. Daughters were held back, sons looked away, grandchildren piled on her stiffening body in a jumble of limbs – but there was no love in that room. There was chaos – there was pain. Clenched jaws and balled fists backdropped with anguish from bodies stiff and broken by the weight of waiting. Questions of ‘why?’ and ‘how?’, punctuated by declarations of denials and remorse. Women stumbled out of the room mumbling “She’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone…” While men, emasculated by helplessness, shed tears in silence.

For three minutes, these gendered displays of grief united all in shared bereavement.

Then, one looks at another through stinging tears and remembers the ugliness of their kin, the wrong they have wrought, the conflicts that were never resolved; they appraised their grievances and –

Grief gives way to anger.

Unforgiveness, hardened with fury, was ammunition directed at themselves and each other; at their deities, at matters of men and of ‘who gets what’. Battle lines were formed, trenches were dug, mortars were primed, and threats of violence made.

This was how my grandmother died. Her children arguing over matters of principle, and financials. Her passing marked the beginning of a civil war that tore her family in two. But it was the months leading to her death that actually mattered – at least to her.

I was told she was once strong enough to bend iron, I believed it. Even in her golden years, her arms lifted more than my twelve-year-old body could bear. She was impressive in her stature, fierce and gentle. A nurturer, a mother to seven children, three grandchildren, and a garden with no less than two mango trees. We grew as her garden did, large, overflowing, wild in our youth and wiser by the years.

As we grew up, she grew old.

Her diagnosis confronted her with the threat of eternity, and burdened my mother and I with her salvation. We prayed for deliverance and it worked. She took Pascal’s wager the night the pastor visited. For what did she have to lose? She was dying anyway; a chance at Heaven is preferable to eighteen levels of Hell.

Even with her failing body, she played by the rules; attending church dutifully, sometimes even twice a week. She got better, losing her hair but regaining her strength. Death was averted by faith. But her faith was weak and her efforts slackened – for she was not entirely convicted.

So she was reminded.

Her remission was a death sentence. Still, I prayed for clemency; for faith can move mountains, and it worked the first time. I begged for the postponement of her passing, but nothing seemed to change, she grew weaker by the day. Perhaps, she accepted that her life had run its course; and in my selfishness, I was holding her back.

But I did not give her permission to die.

I refuse to believe her back would bow to disease. The woman that raised me was stronger than any I have known; if not for the comfort brought by the gospel, would she have lived?

She was baptised before she passed on; sprinkled with holy water as communion was shot up her veins. That day my mother told me, “She can go in peace now.” I think my mother prayed for her to die. We worked against each other, guess her conviction was stronger than mine.

That was two days ago, and now she can hardly feel her body. She hears the cries of her family knows of the petty fighting and jealously. They were children fighting over the toys she left for them and have neglected their duties to her garden, letting weeds take root in it. She can no longer tend to the mango flowers that bloom in the rainy season, nor harvest the fruit it bears.

Her children have begun to unearth hatred and resentment, blaming their siblings for everything and nothing. As she shed her mortal coil, the hostilities suppressed by her dwindling presence overflowed. She was at peace, we were not.

It took her three hours to die after we took off life-support.

I hated every moment of it.

“A violent death is an untimely one,

no one expects her to depart – not this audaciously, not this unjustly.”

She still lives. No one believed that she had died; she was Schrodinger’s Cat, neither alive nor dead – at least in our minds that was our belief.

Dawn was breaking when we were informed of the accident. Immediate and painless, a blind turn, the car, no, the other one had the right of way; but was going too fast, not looking where he should – his fault! But it did not matter, she was dead the moment she was ripped from her seat and thrown halfway out the window. At least, that was what people were telling us, not that we believed them anyway.

We denied that possibility as we returned to our rooms. Those girls in her suite, I wonder how they must feel sharing a space with a girl neither alive nor dead. The two boys I saw crying, they were usually so stoic, so strong, expressionless even. Now they are sobbing from bloodshot eyes, their frames racked with shivers, tears staining their hands and thighs. They were distraught, and so was everyone else.

The bed and was cold and uninviting. I stared at my wall and I asked if it thought this was fair. The wall gave no answers, it heard me alright, it has ears. But that night too, it was at a loss of words.

An air of solemnity hung over the corridors like spiderwebs we consistently forgot to clean. Greetings began with a kind look and soft “Hey, how are you?” The response was a wordless understanding, an acknowledgement sorts. We did not say much that week, we all had the same thoughts; there was a void that flesh used to fill, and we have yet to accept that.

Things began to change after her passing was made public. There was a public uproar over the gross unfairness of it all. A furor over how she was not wearing her seatbelt; and how both drivers were at fault. It was an apportioning of blame, but to no consequence; the state of a cold body does not change, no matter the conviction of words spoken over it.

The outpouring of public sympathy asserts its reality onto our limbo. The girls in her suite broke down in varying degrees, some moved out, and one moved into the room that used to be hers. The two boys retreated into their shells, no one could reach them. We spoke less. Just a month ago, a number of us gathered in her room for supper, boisterous, drunk, and planning for a post-semester trip she will never make it for. That night, we purchased plane tickets and formed our pact; then got distracted by the prospect of soju, sleepless nights, and the licences of youth.

She was so full of life then.

Her ticket was refunded after my fifth email.

The funeral was in four days.

Then the world learned of how she wrote of her own funeral. A passage that she submitted as homework three days before of the accident, maybe in a way she knew her time was coming to a close. She spoke about how destiny and perception mediate the fairness of a passing – her passing. She wrote about what she cared, and can no longer, care for. She believed that ‘Funerals serve as rather efficient gatherings’, and that ‘Everything…has a time limit’. Even as we spoke of her through eulogies; she was already dying a second time. We would soon forget, for we were young once, as she was then.

Being preoccupied with living, I have hardly given death any thought. But the spectacle of dying and what comes after for the still-living taught me that there never was a choice. Death is an accident the same way life was; just or unjust, timely or otherwise, it’s a debt owed on our first breath – and collected on our last. It may be that a good death is one expected, but expectations are things for the living, the dead only have ends. So while still living, we are privileged to witness the departure of others – and to consider our own. By writing, I was glad I did, for if I keeled over suddenly, I wouldn’t be out anything.