Part of growing up is probably coming to terms with death. People protect you from it when you’re still a child, but when you’re older, the general expectation is that you know what dying means – or at least, since dying means something different for everybody, you have a personal idea of what it’s like. And I think sometimes people assume that you’re okay conversing about it, that it shouldn’t disturb you to know about a death because you’re old enough.
But no matter how many times I hear about someone who passes away, or takes his own life, I can’t get used to it. I honestly doubt I ever can. There’s some sort of emptiness left behind. A walking, living, feeling person is reduced to a doll-like figure in a wooden box. It is buried, like his memories, his emotions, his air, his conversations, his thoughts, his touch. You have his things, you can touch them and smell them, and it will seem like a dream; like – you know, maybe he’s just away for a while, he will come back. Look, he left his comb here, he left his closet door ajar, he’s got a bag of half-finished crisps he’s saving for later. He’s just out running errands, not gone forever. He will come back and sleep in his bed tonight, he will come back and have dinner with you just like everyday before. He will come back and finish what he started, he will close his closet door, he will finish the crisps and fall asleep beside you. Then you spend the night thinking, and waiting and hoping, and waking up the next morning hoping it was all a lie and a dream – only it wasn’t.
You will go about your daily errands, drop something on the floor, complain that you are clumsy and then expect to hear him comforting you, but there isn’t a single sound, not even a moving shadow to respond to you. Or you will hear sounds like that sound like him, and then absent-mindedly call out to him, but realise that you were hearing things. Or a neighbour.
And how do people cope with that? And worse, if they regret something they did or didn’t say or do for the person when he was there? Compensating for something will never be as good as doing the thing itself when you could.
I wonder what people think before they die. Doo their lives flash before their eyes? Do they think of people they love? Do they think forward, and wonder what they’ll see? Literature loves giving us ideas like these, and take our imaginations away with it…maybe it’s really so much simpler?
Or before they take their own life. Do they regret it the instant they go pass the point of no return? The moment their body sags into the rope under the weight of gravity?
Someone whose face I know just took his own life some time back. I can’t help but wonder.
Is it courage or is it cowardice?
Or is it just an inevitable chain of events that makes you feel powerless to stop what’s about to come, that you’ve lost control over things?
It’s always hard to justify or to condemn things like this, isn’t it.
It scares me.
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January 12, 2009 at 9:59 am
Liv
I get you. ….And what were they thinking when they put that comb down on the dresser, or went to close the closet door? Did they know they would not come back to comb their hair or open the door?
There are those who are resigned to their fate when it is beyond their control, and then those who suddenly fight to survive in the midst of taking their own life….
January 19, 2009 at 12:47 am
teddY
It’s not cowardice. Everyone fears death, and we are human afterall. We depend on each other for support and validation of our self identity (in a psychological way, that is), and the death of one will definitely adversely affect others around him. I was very shaken and disturbed with the death of a few online friends of friends – one died of a rather violent death, being robbed and stabbed in his own apartment unit in Philippines, while the other died in a tragic car crash near the Switzerland/France border on the day her husband presented her the wedding ring.
Death always seem to come at the wrong time, and it is not complete – parts of the person’s life remains. Like what you’ve mentioned, they leave behind their personal artifacts as grim reaper doesn’t take everything away (they’re probably too heavy for him, imagine lugging that stupid pink Bentley of Paris Hilton’s if she dies someday).
I only went through one death in my extended family for the past 19 years. An uncle who was very humorous, nice and loves playing guitar. He loved to tickle me a lot because the way I laugh (and gah his fingernails were so long they make his tickles even more nightmarish). The day he died, he was in Indonesia supervising some cargo when a cable snapped and he was crushed by the cargo. It sounded very unbelievable to me, and I always thought (for months) that he will someday return and pass his death off as a crude joke. He never returned.
Death scares me. Especially when my great grandmother is hitting the 100s and my grandparents health slowly deteriorating over the years. We all ignore it to spare our mind the thoughts of death, but I couldn’t shake the bad feeling
Take care!
January 19, 2009 at 12:50 am
teddY
p/s: As a friend has put it, suicide is nothing more than the most selfish form of complaining ever invented by the juvenile mind.
p/p/s: I read an article in the papers that more than half of people who committed suicide actually regretted their decision the split second they jumped off the [insert a location high above ground]. I don’t know how true is it, but many of them just couldn’t face death. They wanted a quick way out through suicide, but never knew how dying feels like. It’s just scary.
January 22, 2009 at 11:06 pm
Suicide « The other side
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