Is that really it?

I keep telling my friends that some days,  they are just to reminisce. You find yourself wandering the the dark alleyways of your mind, finding nooks and crannies that are just too unpleasant to visit. But some events in your life, they just make you think about what was and what will be. Following the death of a relative, I was reminded of my interactions with death and how I tried to understand death. The first time I realized the permanence of death was a couple of months after my great grandmother died. She had been sick for a while and her death even though not too unexpected, was a blow to everyone in the family. For a few days, I kept walking into her room half expecting, half hoping she would be there. For a 9 year old, maybe the concept of death was too big a concept to grasp instantly. A couple of months later, I would just wake up one day only to have one thought looming in my head: We’re all gonna die.  Life stopped making sense for a while. Whatever I did, I was taunted by the uncertainty and pointlessness of life that this statement introduced me to. Eventhough it took me some time to open up to my family about the struggle I was going through, I eventually did and they did everything they could to help me out. But nothing helped then and I had a terrible year.  Fear of losing people dear to me made life a living hell. I prayed to all the gods I know to let me be a ghost when I die so that I can still see everyone. I eventually got over my fear of death only to worsen my fear of others dying. 

I still don't know when it happened, but I did get over that fear too. Fear transformed into a slow melancholic sadness that I will forever hide in the back of my mind. The realization that my time on earth was limited gave me a new lease on life for a few days. But then days started feeling just normal. There were days when I did nothing, days when I was rude to everyone and days when I became an absolute nightmare to everyone around me. Some days I was just mad at myself for the things that I did and also for the things that I never did.  This fistfight with myself never seemed to end, but again I think I found balance somehow. Maybe in life you can't be perfect; you will fight with your mom, be rude to people and not make enough time for your family. When people show up even after they realize that you’re flawed just like anybody else, you can know for sure that you have to hold on to them no matter what. As for the pointlessness of life, my great grandmother gave me the answer without ever really saying it. As long as I am an empathetic human being, she will be remembered. I don't know how to explain it but maybe the point of life is to create an impact, however small it may be, in someone else’s life. Everything good I may have done or will ever do, she had a part to play in it. As long as you're in the minds of your loved ones, you never die.  As we all become entangled in the complexities of life, the ones we lost remain in our minds as bittersweet memories. Our memories of them may fade over time, but do they ever really leave us? I don't think so.