Death and Mourning

Death is eerie and creepy, it is also a reminder of our own mortality, frailty and vulnerability that we try our hardest to put out of our mind and our societies.

In it's nature we tend to associate both with peace and sadness, time cut short and a purpose fulfilled. We often have conflicted views and feelings about it...we are not quite sure what to do with it as it tends to be an end for us and perhaps a new beginning for those who believe.

Death has fascinated me and well, scared me thoroughly for much of my conscious life. There seems to be an occupation with it somewhere within this tiny vessel of mine.

Why is it that we desire to see people of our kin and friends before they depart for their final destination? We'd like to be there for their needs and do our final part and fulfill our obligations so that our conscious may be clean and rest easy as we lay to sleep at night. All of which are things that we do more for our selves than for the deed of others.

But yet, it leaves us mourning, gets us to think about the potentials that could never be lived and our own eventual demise...the things, people we will be leaving. The surmounted artifacts we have collected over the years, the experience we have collected by making tons of mistakes and the bonds we have deeply forged through pain and laughter...all that we will be eventually leaving, sooner or later, to an unknown world. For some, hell, for some heaven, for some nothing but decaying and rotting. That has to be the most scary part of death. Not knowing. The unknown with it's allusion and charm has the same potency into scaring someone from dying. Who wouldn't? I know I am.

But, why do we mourn after the dead? Do we mourn because of the unharnessed potential of the person who has left us behind, or because we no longer have the access to the soft emotions that the person has created in us, the reliance we have on them. Is it an access issue rather than anything else?