 |
| Flower (Photo credit: @Doug88888) |
Life is an infinite collection of connected moments. There is, however, only one of those moments which lasts for an eternity, that being the final moment where we pass from being to nothingness. From dust you came and to dust you shall return...
And post-modernists argue that there are no absolute truths...
Whatever. We are born from nothing, we live, and then we die, passing to another realm perhaps, being in the warm loving hands of a power greater than ourselves, we return again to the bosom of the universe, the nothingness leaving behind an ever decreasing pile of matter. Entropy in action. We are at rest; at one with the cosmos.
My father died recently. He had a smile on his face. All around him were the signs of a man, a little boy who had grown old, pushing on. Slippers placed neatly under his bed, toothbrush next to the basin, razor sitting next to the taps. I cried knowing that he was not going to be there any more for me and also because my own life had suddenly become foregrounded against the background of his mortality. He smiled back at me and I kissed him. The warmth had left his skin as he lay there perhaps having answered the call to come from his mother.
So he lay there motionless and in a matter of days his body, having been embalmed and prepared for its final resting place, he would be lowered into the ground in his coffin. A priest would sprinkle some holy water onto the coffin and throw a few clods of earth on top once the casket had been lowered into the grave. Flowers and a crucifix were then thrown in for good measure and now it was again a game of the living.
I turned and walked silently with my partner towards our car. It was a nice funeral everyone agreed. In a way a celebration of having reached peace, an end to agitation and the beginnings of serenity, a stillness undisturbed beneath the grassy fields above.
I shook the priest's hand and thanked him for the serene way he had conducted the mass and burial ritual. The present is always already there right before us, if only we dare to look...
So he lay there motionless and in a matter of days his body, having been embalmed and prepared for its final resting place, he would be lowered into the ground in his coffin. A priest would sprinkle some holy water onto the coffin and throw a few clods of earth on top once the casket had been lowered into the grave. Flowers and a crucifix were then thrown in for good measure and now it was again a game of the living.
 |
| Keku sarcophagus (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
I turned and walked silently with my partner towards our car. It was a nice funeral everyone agreed. In a way a celebration of having reached peace, an end to agitation and the beginnings of serenity, a stillness undisturbed beneath the grassy fields above.
I shook the priest's hand and thanked him for the serene way he had conducted the mass and burial ritual. The present is always already there right before us, if only we dare to look...
