Ramblings on Death

The Story of Passing

I remember so well the day my grandmother passed away. It was New Year’s Eve and it is so perfectly imprinted in my brain that I can never forget that day or how I felt.  My siblings and I were at our cousin’s house for a sleepover to ring in the New Year. My brother got a phone call and I remember I had a slice of Jalapeno pizza in my hand. I was about to take a bite when my brother hung up the phone and told us the news. I was stunned. She was ill but no matter how much you prepare for it, death is always a surprise. It was like an out of body experience. I remember just sitting there, with my mouth still open, poised to take a bite out of the pizza. I never did take that bite.

We all went home and sat together and talked and fell asleep wherever we were sitting. Our parents didn’t wake us, like they always would, to send us to our rooms. Instead, they just let us be. I remember when I woke up the next morning; it took a moment to remember what had happened. I laid there for a long time just thinking how curl this world is, how heartlessly it moves on like nothing has happened. No matter how big the tragedy, the sun always rises. 

That is the reality of it all. My grandmother was gone, she was dead. I hadn’t seen her in four years and now I was never going to see her again. This was a tragedy; the world should have stopped spinning. The sun shouldn’t have risen. 

But it did. 

The world kept on spinning and the sun continued to rise, oblivious to the pain it caused. And those of us who are left behind, we have to move on with the world or else, we become worse than the dead. We become the living dead, covered in the dust of time yet untouched by its healing hand. We slowly turn into stone, until death comes to, finally, shatter our statue and releases our tortured soul.