Things Of The Departed

By Vidhi Kotak

It’s not fair how easy it is to feel pain. And the contrary too, respectively. Among other pains from the list of this inescapable emotion, the pain derived from the loss of life seems to be the most astringent kind.

Someone too close, who was within the circle of your being, entangled in a plethora of patterns from your center to their peripheries and vice versa. Just goes. And sudden, multiple incisions are made in your crochet. The patterns get ripped and your center becomes a cyclone. A voluptuous void is created in which time stuffs itself and demands you to rewind and decipher everything you had with the one gone. So much space and such little breath.

The worst thing about humans is that we have a lot of things. We are made of our things. They personify us at various magnitudes.

And ironically, our things become more ours as soon as we die.

Oh, that’s his book. Please don’t sit there, it’s her chair. Her room. His plants, his cup, her lighter, his pen, toothbrush, shoes, quilt, plate, cycle, watch, stopwatch, stop. Stop.

Even a petty pair of spectacles becomes a spectacle. So tell me, what do you do with the tangible remains of their irreplaceable energy? Do you clinch their things more, letting their last touch seep into your skin a little? Do you smother your chest with their clothes, wishing you’d hugged them more, and better and tighter? Do you caress their scribblings, trying to hear their words? Do you meditate when all your conversations begin resounding in the silence of their absence? Do you… What; do you do?

This clinging to their things leads to clinging to their smile, which leads to clinging to their smell and their songs and their shine and their stories? And the sounds of their mouth when they ate? What do you do with each micron of their magnanimous memories?

Nothing breaks my heart more than the fear that a certain person may someday be gone forever.And just like that, their name will never flash on my phone again.

By Vidhi Kotak