(this post is taken from my random personal journal which I wrote about a year ago)
My friends and I were walking around downtown Toronto. We were chit-chatting and making jokes about life. And suddenly, one of us received a call about his closest friend's death. He was so young, 19 years old like I was. But out of nowhere, bus accident took him away from his family and friends.
An intense atmosphere suddenly aroused among us there. One of us tried to crack another joke, but it wasn't so helpful. Clearly, death is something that you can't discuss casually.
But in the matter of death, is there somewhat a normalcy in facing it? Should we be taboo about it? Should we be casual about it? Should the fact that 150,000 people die everyday mean nothing to us? Should we not be afraid of death?
We search the answers to life questions all the time. Some people, like me, travel miles to seek definitions of life; what does it really mean? and how can we get the most out of it?
But what about death? In the end, we are all going to face death anyway, aren't we? Death comes to us in the most expected and unexpected way possible. Some people died because their ages said it would be a total miracle if they had lived longer than their current oldness, some people died to chronic diseases from substances they had consumed during their lives, but there are also people whose deaths were caused by some silly little accidents that might seem so unlikely to be a threat to life. Sometimes, there isn't even a cause of death, sometimes people just died while they were resting or praying.
I am hardly a religious man, but ironically, I believe in the afterlife. Still, this belief is not enough to demolish my fear of death. Although I (personally and controversially speaking) know that people wouldn't go dead, like in a notion of die-gone-forever, I worry about death, a lot. I can be cranky when talking about war and killing, sometimes, I can even get paranoiac over illness (oh boy, ask any of my friend about it).
Somehow I have gotten too comfortable with this world I now live in. Life can sometimes be full of messed-up dramas and stupid things, but I love the world, its people and its mundanity.
I am hardly a religious man, but ironically, I believe in the afterlife. Still, this belief is not enough to demolish my fear of death. Although I (personally and controversially speaking) know that people wouldn't go dead, like in a notion of die-gone-forever, I worry about death, a lot. I can be cranky when talking about war and killing, sometimes, I can even get paranoiac over illness (oh boy, ask any of my friend about it).
Somehow I have gotten too comfortable with this world I now live in. Life can sometimes be full of messed-up dramas and stupid things, but I love the world, its people and its mundanity.
....
My father used to tell me to hold my breath until i could hear the ocean in my head. And i did, it was a soft roar of sky fighting sea. Eventually when my eyes rolled back like waves, he would make me breathe so i didn't drown.
My father was always there to tell me to breathe out, but now without him telling me what to do all the time, sometimes it seems i am forgetting how to breathe out.
....
We were very young when our father left for a work trip in US. Our mother was home, but we missed our father and his stories about stars, planets, and of course, the mystery of death.
One night we tried in vain to bring our father back to life in our mother, she laid on our bed and we begged a story about ghosts and the afterlife, but she would only do a story on stuffs that are related to our school, like stuff on milk. And rather than talking about the grandeur of the milkyway, she told us the percentages (down to 7 figures) of the essential vitamins in milk. We yawned and slept as she watched on proudly, thinking she had inspired delighting dreams of strong bones and teeth - when she'd only influenced desperate curiosity about death.
When you were young you didn't understand death. death to us was a tall, quiet man dressed in dark and very angry. a shadow of tree limbs on our bedroom wall, rustling and rasping and looking for greatgrandparents to suck and spit and leave to be only memories. Death was whatever scared us most at the time.
....
Once I went to a sea in Jogjakarta. the only other time had been with my family on vacation completely together and that had been a beautiful day. Full of sun and seashells and seabirds and sand. We walked ankle deep on a river beside the sea and we laughed about the silly things we had stumbled upon during our trip. The water level was rising as the soft-glow of the sun shone lightly in the sky. But then in split seconds, the sun was already below the horizon, and the waves were moving so fast between me and my sister.
The waves were pushing my sister and I towards this massive swirling point at the sea, exactly six feet ahead of us. I would be able to get hold of myself and walk to the shore safely, but not with my sister who was floating feebly along the waves. We were panicking. I was crying for help, but oddly, nobody helped us, even a buffy guy near us. I think my sister wanted to scream too, but the waves were coming to her face and filling her mouth with abundant amount of water. I too was soaked and filled with water.
I almost lost the grip of my sister's hand, but my father suddenly spotted us struggling, then ran and helped us. My father carried us to the shore and lied us down. I felt a lot of people were watching us, but I couldn't care about them, I was only thinking of a way to breathe, yeah, I was already out of breath. My father was telling me to breathe out, but the only thing was in my mind was death. Then, I couldn't see nothing but an uber bright white light and I also heard a looping female scream in my head. I was afraid as the most I had ever been and I was holding my sister's hand super tightly. But after my father pressed my stomach twice, the sea water was immersing out of my mouth. The strains in my head were suddenly gone, I was saved.
.....
This episode might have happened a long time ago, I even have forgotten the remaining details of the trip, but the memory of kissing the death still haunts me like it had just happened yesterday.
.....
This episode might have happened a long time ago, I even have forgotten the remaining details of the trip, but the memory of kissing the death still haunts me like it had just happened yesterday.
