WHY DO WE ALL END UP DEAD?
Besides the time my body was invaded with anesthetics during a tonsillectomy surgery, the only other time I recall experiencing a bout of amnesia was the moment life forced me to stare upon my wailing mum dressed completely in black. She was crawling on the floor in pain besides a grim wooded box hammering it hard with her hand like what most of us do when a door is suddenly slammed on our face and locked just when we were about to enter. That box contained the forty-seven-year-old lifeless body of her husband, my dad.
That ghastly sight shut down my mind and the rest of my nervous system for a while and the only recollection I still have is that when I finally came back to myself the rest of my body had collapsed in a heap on the floor for God knows how long.
That’s what grief from loss does to us. It shuts down our critical systems for a time.
But the worst was still to come.
Nothing grieves the heart more than the absence of what used to be present. My father’s empty couch, the eerie silence in his workshop and a dead man’s clothes still occupying its usual place in the wardrobe broke my heart to pieces that I doubted would ever be glued together again.
Truth is, it hurts to live after a bright light has been extinguished.
It hurts to live in the aftermath of a robbery by the grim reaper.
Grief not only empties the tear glands, it paints the world colorless, it deprives food of tastiness and it makes music painful to listen to.
The well-intentioned platitudes of family and friends which toyed on the comfortable idea that dad was in a far much better place than this run down planet we called home did little to provide the much needed soft landing. In fact, in a few calendar months’ much of the support system of family and friends would exacerbate the grief by their inevitable retreat to mind their own business. After all, the world has to carry on after a death. But would my mother, my brothers, my only sister and myself carry on after the demise of a towering figure that dad was? Is it possible to carry on when life gives you the big middle finger?
In the wake of every death, through the fog of pain, the inquisitorial WHY rears its ugly head demanding utmost attention. We ask WHY people die when we all know that at some point people die, when we all know that we all die someday not very far from today. Even those with strong religious convictions of a better afterlife are confronted by the same question WHY even when they believe that death is the only passageway to a better afterlife. Within the deep chambers of our hearts we selfishly ask WHY us and not them who have to lose a loved one.
Even to this day WHY still stubbornly refuses to be placated when it comes to the departure of my father. WHY popped up when I went to the cemetery where my dad was laid to rest. With my nose dripping as I struggled to keep a torrent of tears at bay, WHY showed up fully dressed for the occasion. After two decades of fatherlessness I was a mess. “Would I have been like this if dad had not left?”, WHY seemed to be quizzing me.
WHY also reminded me of DC!
DC had been a unique friend.
I struggled to understand WHY a rising star could fall so abruptly.
The telephonic news of DC’s demise, which I received unexpectedly in a parking lot preparing for the hospital visit that would never happen, hit me devastatingly like the Hiroshima atomic bomb of 1945. I was left staggering and almost breathless.
It felt like the end of history itself.
Life felt so empty, so cold and so ugly.
After a few phone calls to some friends and workmates relaying the sad news I drove myself home. I knew life would never be the same without him especially for his young family. As I drove along the busy, traffic clogged streets of Harare, I saw people. Some were in their cars, others were walking the sidewalks, some looked happy, a lot were expressionless, but all of them were oblivious to what had just happened to DC and of course they were unaware that they too at some point in time would die.
The world just carried on and the world would still carry on after we all die.
While he was still here, a lot of people disagreed with DC, including myself. DC called it “a bone of contention” in his harangues. This “bone of contention” arose principally from DC’s notion that he, unlike the rest of us, was divinely destined for the upper rungs of life’s ladder. Not that this self-belief was of and in itself depraved but DC relegated everyone else to the peripheries to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, leaving only himself at the apex. Aside from his arrogance DC’s strong sense of purpose provided a refreshing break from a world largely hurling purposelessly to an unknown abyss. Yet all that abruptly disappeared into nothingness like a puff of smoke. WHY?
DC’s untimely death was like a great awakening. Having passed away at only thirty-five, the lesson was simple yet profound. It was that life, our life, whoever we were, was too short and never therefore to be wasted. When our time comes to be cleared out of this world, what would we say about life, our life?
As much as I tried to prepare for everything in life, there was no preparing for the tragedy that struck a few days before the end of 2018. Three young boys, whom I knew of personally, drowned in a swimming accident at a church camp outing. It was a somber moment watching the parents, siblings, relatives, friends and loved ones’ trying to cope with the loss. WHY showed up at their funerals asking everyone WHY young boys, pregnant with so much potential, would die so tragically a few hours after praising God in song and dance!
WHY do we all end up dead?
