i grieve your death at the footstep of memories

Death is the closest the living get to afterlife. How does it taste? Is it as disquieting as the journey to the end? How does your heart beat now that it’s all quiet, now that you are not with us now that you don’t count as living? Whom do you remember? What do you see? How does it feel to be my past, my memories, my aching heart?

Silence. Silence that doesn’t hold answers. Silence that doesn’t sound peaceful.

What is life if not a riddle of retrospective that none can answer?

Grief is essentially the last gift from the parting, the worst too. Grief is a love letter, my tears, the shards of my broken heart. Grief is moksha for the heavenly abode, the ultimate revelation of love from the realm of the mortals. A gift.

What is life if not volunteering to grieve, gift and be gifted?

Memories are the ripple across time, the shrine of remembrance and the dungeon of tribulation. Memories are what I have stored behind the floodgates of my tears. Memories are my invocation for deliverance from your absence.

I choose to embrace you to heal my wounds or in moments like these when you are my wound.

Death wears the veil of darkness, but verily she is the bride of the dying, the way to the gates of heaven is her aisle and your dying heartbeat the wedding bells. Her inevitability are your wedding vows, so let me ask what’s obligatory: Do you accept Death to be your destiny?

Your silence is the reply; goodbye. Her power is so palpable but so is my denial. In my denial of your demise, I have sought her acceptance. Now I only await her as I hope you await my arrival at the entrance of the afterlife.

Till Death Do Us Part.

His comatose sleep was coming to an end.

The breathing slowed.

Each breath ticked away down to his last.

I could count it down on my fingers.

This was terror.

This was dying.

My breaths got shorter and shorter with his.

He was taking me with him.

An invisible hand clasping around my throat. 321.

He passed.

I’m still there.

I climb up the glass stairs with a little box in my hand.

I whisper into the box, “I’ll cherish you forever”

I step into the light and my hands are empty. So is my mind. I wonder what’s next...