Just a pain?

I did not know how to respond.
I stopped midway in the conversation. The voice from the other end continiued,"Hey, you alright??....Hello?.... You there?" I could not speak.

“Sleeping, waking, pondering, musing, laughing, sobbing, sinking in…

I wasn’t alone. But lonely.

What happens when people die? Why do they affect us so much?

A distant friend… a brief meeting with her.  But the news made me cry…till tears ceased to come out any more. I saw the world in moist patches and low moods. The overall spirit seemed to vanish in the thin air.

Dying is a stage in life. Maybe. But very difficult to digest. Strange love, it is. With life. Even if we have terrible lives as our share, we tend to prefer it over death. Then the death may be anyone’s. Strange hope is all we live with. Hope for what? For a better tomorrow?  For a better life? Or for a respectable death? “

My friend. Cheerful, caring and loving. Everytime I see her, she runs to me and hugs me tight. “I missed you so much!”, she says. Even after an hour of we last met. I call her up when I feel low, when I am very happy, when I compose a new poem or scribble something in my notebook… She is the one who sees my paintings first. She knows all the songs I sing in bathroom while I take hot water on my shoulders. She just knows what I want to say, when. She is always just a call away… Distances never really separated us. I never felt she was away. She has filled up my senses…

She still lives on. In my heart.

“First time I saw her, turned out to be the last. She was standing by the door. Protecting us from the terrible mob pushing in and out of the train. She smiled at me like summer sunshine…and I never saw her again. She was pulled out in a fraction of a second… and all I saw after that is all blurred…

I don’t want to remember her as the unrecognizable mass of flesh we were asked to identify that evening.”

We literally jumped on the chain and snatched it with all might… but the train did not halt. Stopping was then a remote possibility. All I recall is the terrible shriek I heard of her. And then, her hand desperately clenching the platform. I was helpless. I could not do anything… but watch her go. I felt as if the earth has stopped to rotate and revolve, the sun became dimmer… and all I remember is waking up at some platform, and the police staring at me… waiting for me to wake up.

“Worst kind of tour we ever had. This ended so badly. The lease of life seemed to evaporate just like that…”

Is death really that bad?

Or just another pain life wishes to ‘show’ us?