Disclaimer: This letter is quite a positive re-elaboration of the concept of death. It might be interesting to read if you have already thoroughly processed the idea of death or if you are not grieving anyone at the moment. In case you are currently grieving someone or your thoughts about death are darker than this, know that they are important and valid. Do not push away the pain but integrate it as a part of yourself, just like you would do with any other emotion.
A letter to Death.
Death is a strange story. And I don't know if it is as strange as Love, or not. To be honest, I know so little about love that perhaps comparing them is naive… but maybe that's why I'm doing it: because I know so very little about Death too. Like a question left unanswered: a great question mark to which several realities cling to, but none of them truly define it. Right now, Death to me is life. I don't comprehend the distinction between life and Death. Death is a part of life, it's a phase: the final phase of one body and one soul.
Who knows what Death really is… What if it’s just a game, a trick, a hoax… or is it living life but we don't know it because we can’t perceive it? Or maybe Death is everything, like white. White as everything, but as nothing. A Tabula Rasa where another life rises?
Perhaps I will never be able to understand You until You take me...kind of like how I would describe Love.
Who knows what You really are, Death. Who knows when You will take me or when we will meet again. I think that You are closer to me than I know, than I can imagine, but I'm so caught up in my life that I ignore You, I don't see You. But, it could be a matter of seconds before You come out the shadows: like a sudden flash You could appear, leaving my eyes in eternal darkness.
Today Death, I have been in contact with You. You took her, just like You took my grandparents. I don't know if saying You took them is the best way to say it; maybe they came to You.... And although I am sorrowful, I realised how much You make me want to celebrate: celebrate the living and the dead. Celebrate life, for those who are still living it, or life for those who are no longer living it, like my grandparents. Now that they are somewhere else in some other form, speaking another language and with a different face, I want to celebrate them. Because that's what You are to me, Death: celebration, remembering, appreciating and being thankful. I want to live in a world where Death is color, not darkness. As humans, we get easily scared of endings... without ever thinking that the end of something is always the beginning of something else. Where there is Death, there is Birth. Where a rope tears, a knot is already forming. Where one door shuts, another one is opening. I would like to live in a world like this: a world where an ending pushes us towards new and different beginnings.
Still, I don't want to take away from Death the pain it causes, and the pain that is right for us to feel. Without doubt, Death is frightening and shocking. A malignant evil that suffocates the living. But: we mustn't wallow in grief. We should feel it to the very end and then set off for what awaits us. We must seize the sprint that pain gives us, we must know how to take it and how to make the most of it.
So Death, I don't know when I will meet You again, but when take moment comes, I still hope to see You as an opportunity to celebrate life and for my pain to carry me further. I don't know what You are, but I will welcome You with open arms.