Let’s talk about death.

by josefina y Villanueva

A friend of mine recently died. We shared a lot. We shared so much. Our memories together are strong. How can such strength collapse to nothing at the end of the day?

Death is the opposite of life, but we don’t talk about it as much as we talk about life. As if the death word is damned; no one wants to discuss it, and if someone does, s/he knocks on a wood, curses his/her mouth, and fidgets subtly, as if s/he is doomed to tread the road to perdition right there and then, for the mere act of thinking about it and s/he feels suddenly evil. As if it’s suddenly real. Why is death always serious and never casual? We never play with even the thought of it? What’s the use of NOT talking about it when no one knows about it anyway? But then again, what’s the use of talking about it when no one knows about it anyway?

But isn’t death with us everyday?

Isn’t it a temporary death when we lie in bed at night and doze off into dreams, and sometimes into mere vacuum because we are unconscious? We fall into stupor and none of us knows what is happening to us – whether we’re standing up, experiencing REM, or muttering while the eyes are shut (save for the mosquitoes circling on our surface which are, of course, not credible to talk to after sucking the blood out of us). Our state of unconsciousness is a state of death. You may not agree I understand. But who knows the truth?

Sometimes, we experience death with the demise of the spirit. Life often sucks, and it sure sucks the life out of us. That is why, sometimes after a from-dawn-till-dusk workout at the gym, we reward ourselves with a feast. It’s a cycle of life – of losing and dying, of gaining and living.

Sometimes I wish someone who has been dead would resurrect and present him/herself to the living and tell about what it’s like being dead and being in whatever place it is after earth. I wish s/he would talk to the living and remind them all the requisites to having eternal life so they won’t end up like him/her – dead and gone. Is death really what we know it here and now? Is death a form of punishment or reward for how we excelled or failed in the school of life? Like any other word, death is relative to each being. I’m sure all of us have been dead, one way or another.

My friend didn’t die a physical death. He merely left. But it was death for me. I died that day.

(first published in Fragments, Miriam College portfolio, 2005)