No getting used to death that comes unannounced

Human, After All

All I remember from that day in February is Thankamma aunty’s deep sighs. It was a few days after her husband’s death. Martin uncle was 93. He lived a long and healthy life. I’d see him sitting out on the verandah day after day, watching the world go by. I’d laugh when I saw him getting his hair coloured jet black. His greys would never shine through. Never. He hated that. Even when he was 93.

One day, just like that, Martin uncle died. Just like that. He’d had lunch, lay down for a nap and never got up. A peaceful way to die. But that was the reason for Thankamma aunty’s deep sighs. She wasn’t expecting it. A long healthy life is given to few. So it was fine, she said. But it was the unexpectedness of death that shocked her. It had come so quietly, without an announcement.

Every time I see Thankamma aunty, I think of those sighs.

Earlier this month when Kannada actor Chiranjeevi Sarja passed away of a heart attack, I wondered what his family were going through. He was 39, young, at the peak of his career, not long married, he had the world at his feet. But he too was gone — one fine day, just like that.

That day in June, I saw many posts on Instagram expressing shock and disbelief at Chiranjeevi Sarja’s passing. One of those was a reader of this column. I reacted to his post and sent an emoji expressing sadness. He replied back.

The actor’s death had reminded him of his father’s demise in 2011. The family had returned from an outing and dinner and then past midnight, his father was no more. He was a child, 11 at the time. But Chiranjeevi Sarja’s death and that of his father had made him think of the unfairness of life. “We spend a lifetime making sure our lives are secure. But you don’t know when it can all be snatched from you,” his message read.

His memory of his father is vivid yet foggy. What he remembers of that night is his mother crying and wanting to do something, anything to make it better for some. But an 11-year-old’s vocabulary can only comfort so much.

Then his life changed — unexpectedly, just like the unexpected death. He wonders now if that moment was the end of his childhood. There was neither time nor place to express tenderness. It was time to grow up.

He’s 20 now, mature for his years. He missed out on values that only our dads can give us, he told me during our exchange.

I read a memoir titled, Wave, about how the tsunami in Sri Lanka changed the writer’s life beyond all imagination. The morning of December 26, 2004, Sonali Deraniyagala, her husband, parents and two boys were on a family at the Yala national park. She saw the sea rising, grabbed her children and ran with her husband into a waiting jeep. They were driving away when the wave hit. She was the only survivor of her entire family. This is perhaps the most moving book about the unexpectedness of tragedy, of irreplaceable loss, of deep and dark pain I have read. But it is also a story about acceptance even when there is no resolution to grief.

We all have stories where our loved ones have left us when we didn’t think they would. I do. You do too. Truth is, a life that ends unexpectedly leaves a void, a gap, a hole that you’re constantly trying to make sense of. But life also has unexpected moments of optimism and that no matter what, it must go on.