How fast is changes to was

Do you know what happens first when you get the call?

The one that announces the passing of a loved one?

I’ll let you in on a tale of grief.

My uncle died today. I was making an order for boboa tea when I got the call. It is a sunny day, the sun shining so bright but it felt like an eclipse of the moon.

You know that moment in movies when everything feels like it is in slow motion and every other thing is spinning fast around but you cannot relate because it seems like you must be back pedaling through time?

Yeah, that’s the first reaction. I think that’s a reaction when something unexpected or unpracticed happens.

It wasn’t one of the typical Fridays I have had in months. First I was in a different city meeting up with a friend for lunch instead of behind a desk staring at emails attending to one correspondence or the other.

I dedicated the day to be a good day. Having just concluded a documentation that had been stressing me a bit. I was suppose to spend time with friends, laughing out loud, sipping cold tea in the summer sun, people gazing, and talking about boys.

Instead, I am at the city centre watching people smiling and laughing, an accordion at the background playing some strange musical tune, praying earnestly that the hysterical voice of my mom chatting “my brother is gone” won’t result in her mind snapping.

Trying to be strong because in the moment I can’t multitask as a consoler and griever. I had to pick a struggle. Consoling came easily it made me postpone my grieving for the time and place I can come undone.

It feels like years went by. Minutes seemed longer, seconds did not seem to be ticking as normal yet, I could decipher that only my world stopped. Everything was still the same and even though I experienced a pause I still had to keep moving, pausing; a facade as long as I still had to breathe. You have to keep on participating as the living do. One inhale at a time.

I am on a bench in a park talking about a graveyard scene etched in my memory from another loss suffered close to me. My first ever participation in a burial rite. We started discussing loss. The after life questions, the monuments of the deceased existence and the brevity of time. All punctuated between hiccups from choking back tears and hysterical laughter, the type that has water pooling at the sides of one’s eyes.

My friend is not trying to cheer me up. She is trying to carry on as normal. I am a bit irritated because I wanted to scream can’t you see I am grieving! Give me space to grieve. Yet, I understood her viewpoint, she has also suffered loss, she knows like I know that the world won’t end even if I was acutely experiencing an ending that wasn’t even mine. The ending does not matter for the deceased. It ended, that’s the point.

Days later, I wake up each day worrying about the grief of others. Wondering what scale I should place mine. My mom lost her brother, my dad a brother-in-law, my Grandma, a son. So yeah, I lost an uncle but in those moments I was grieving through my mother’s eyes her pain was bleeding through acutely.

Mostly, each waking moment I am plagued with all the questions. What is heaven like? A bit of excitement that my uncle finally can have his questions answered, a wondrous curiosity for finding out myself too… It feels like when someone close to you die, you are somehow closer to the pearly gate. I cannot explain this better than saying because you now know you have someone on the other side, you feel like the bridge got smaller.

Then I think of my uncle, how it must have been like being cut off in the middle of plans. Future and present plans, little details like a cravings postponed for later, friends to call or return their call. Apologies to be said or forgiveness given. Memes stored for later or whatever other interest he curated. More importantly how fast “is changes to was.”

“He was such a gentle brother…” my mom said that.

The essence of existence changed with the subtlety of two to three letter words. Ah ah.

The weeks that followed were paranormal for me. I ate chanting “my uncle died today but I can swallow ice cream”, I bought a pearl necklace, went on to see my lover, laughed with my brother, made plans for my dad’s birthday the next month, bought a new phone found a book on the afterlife by serendipity crossing the road. Although, I didn’t know at the time of picking it up.

I read about celestial realms and the possibility of seven realms. The fact that people would have the same lives as here in the afterlife only that the currency would be gratitude. I don’t like that idea. It seems sketchy to me. Although, I fell in love with the idea that experiencing human love would pale in comparison to God’s love and that somehow resolved why there won’t be a need for marriage.

Everyday afterwards, I wake up with a sense of conscious gratitude for each breathe. The urgent need to live some more but not having any will and not knowing what living some more even meant.

Eventually, I was finding my way back to some normalcy again. I stopped filling my journal with torrents of questions on dying, started interjecting it with questions on living too.

I found a post that said we make a mistake thinking that death is a destination we journey towards. Instead, death is present in every phase of our living. As close as seating with us when we turn on Netflix.

Death looks and feels like an end but I am convinced it is some sort of intermission, a gateway, a transport, a metamorphosis…

A necessity for the next phase and the only means to arrive. A good thing because it is the door between an end and a new beginning.

Now the question, will we carry the same consciousness in the next phase? For some the question is whether or not there is a next phase? I know there is a next phase… I know that my knowledge won’t matter except in the experience itself. So I am not even interested in arguing this even with myself.

Secondly, I had the question where is he?

Yes, I know there is a grave yard, a coffin, a laying of the body that’d become bones and dust but that’s not him. I am referring to the essence? Where is that him because that is what we will miss, it is not really about the hugs or the warm body.

Then, the jarring reality. Our body is a suit. We cannot take it with us in the next phase. Hence, we are not our body.

Till later because grieving never ends.