Death – Deeply Misunderstood
Scanning through the Newspaper, I came across a half page obituary. It said of how much his loved ones missed him.
This got me thinking. I found myself asking the age-old question; ‘What is Death?’
Almost each and every person, asks himself this question, at least once in his life. Some think it’s a process by which we move on to a higher consciousness, while others are sure that it’s ‘just’ death, with no continuation.
Many times I have noticed people in tears after a death, and rejoicing after a birth; as a kid I could barely understand this, why didn’t people bid farewell with the same smile they welcomed a new life in? Pondering over it, I just wouldn’t like people feeling bad after my time. It would be way much better if they just said goodbye and got on with their lives.
Though I had this idea of welcoming & bidding farewell to life with a smile, I just couldn’t help feeling bad for the deceased. After a death, we hear family and relatives saying something like “A part of me died today.”
Then it suddenly dawned on me; birth, death, do these things really exist or are they just figments of our imagination, small and feeble partitions to allow the simple human mind of understand the great cycle of life?
A continuous cell cycle is divided into prophase, metaphase etc, have we also divided the continuous process of evolution into birth and death.
Some philosophers tell us that there is life after death, and the deceased continue to live in the hearts of loved ones. But can this be taken in literally sense?
Even looking from a scientific aspect , I think it can; when they meant living in the hearts of loved ones, could they meant the DNA of the deceased, which still lives on it the hearts of their kids.
We all know, DNA plays a very fundamental and vital role in determining who we are, both physically and mentally. So can it be said that the ‘dead’ person literally lives on the ‘heart’ of his family?
Recently, we have new studies cropping up that the DNA, can store genetic memories. So it possible when a person dies, his DNA through his offspring’s body is witnessing his own death and is unable to bear it?
But looking from another aspect, even we humans are basically nothing different from those micro amoebas. In their case one parent cell, splits into two daughter cells. Can this be called death for the Parent cell? No, of course it can’t. The parent cell is now living a brand new life in two different bodies instead of one.
Similarly when there is a death in the family, the pain we experience , is it the one that comes from emotion and loss or, does it come from watching a ‘Part of yourself die?’
So many questions..... and yet a very few answers...
