“Passed On” to the Unknown.

6th August 2004

“Death ends a life but it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor’s mind towards some resolution that it may never find”
Robert Anderson


People say time is the best healer… I’ve rarely experienced the healing power of time. It still hurts the same way as it initially did many years ago. Yes, the severity and sharpness of the pain dulls away and a constant ache takes its place. It may not always be the first thing on our conscious, but it is there nevertheless, pain, triggered by words, nostalgia, yearning and love. We slowly settle into our daily lives and act like nothing happened to cause a change in the cycle of day and night and yet every minute we are affected by it deeply as if there were a shift in the earth’s rotating motion.
Someone’s absence, be it temporary or permanent causes a stirring of emotions never evoked during their presence. Things that now seem extraordinary, moments that are now memories to be cherished forever, never had the same significance. Words and conversations that we quote and repeat to ourselves in solitude or company, seemed just like any other words that come out of a person’s mouth. Conversations we continue to replay in our heads, causing us to hurt ourselves over and over again will always have the same stinging effect. Yes, the pain does dull away; we settle into life’s routine, we realize the first thing we remember when we wake up was not the absence or void but other nitty gritties of life, and slowly it becomes the second and then the third thought. Never quite disappearing but lurking in the shadows of our consciousness.
A day doesn’t go by when we don’t think of them. All those voids and all those marks, not scars, just marks, footprints and memories. Seasons may come and go, and a lifetime may pass, yet the footprints are never quite washed away with the waves that crash against rocks and at times slowly caress the sand, they do become faint and dull with time, but never so dull that they can’t be seen on a lonely dark night with a starless sky. For when I take a walk along the shore on such a night, my companions are just them, the footprints and the memories of those whose path somehow met mine, whose life beautifully touched mine.