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Death

              The most frightening word, which no one inclines to entertain with, is DEATH. Death is one of the existential questions, which everyone tends to avoid consciously or unconsciously. It is the end of life. It is a universal phenomenon and a law natural. But what is Death? Is death simple an end of life? Is death emptiness and nothingness? Why is death a mystery?


The normal understanidng of death is- if the heart stops breathing and if the temperature of a person slowly drops down to that of its surrounding, we pronounce dead. We have scientific knowledge from the very conception about life, but we are ignorant regarding to the signs of death. “It is when someone ceases to live. Medicine does not know what death is; it can only decipher its signs and apparent causes, but the profound reality of death escapes it. The pathological or natural mechanisms (aging) which result in the fact of death, are more or less explained, but knowledge goes no farther.” (Marc Oraison)


Scientists recognize three types of death that might occur during the life of every organism namely: ‘Necrobiosis death is an ongoing process of death of cell in every organism during life time. Nerosis death is the death of tissues. For instance during the heart attack some blood may clot up and cut the blood circulation some parts of the heart. the affected parts will die but an organism  continue to live. Somatic death is the dead of entire organism.


 “We mortal human die for the same metaphysical reason that our shoes wear out, mountains erode and solid iron bars rust: all material things eventually fall back- or disintegrate- into that out of which they are made.”(Cyril Desbruslais). Whatever existing matters will eventually fall apart or disintegrate- death. “What we call “death” or “corruption” is a breaking down of the being concerned into its elemental or molecular constituents and the recombining of these into other beings or another being.


I have no idea of the movement of my death, but am certain that it will happen.  And it is the only event in my life for which my certitude is reversed, bearing on the fact and not on the date. Death seems to be a personal event “The death of one gives rise to the birth of another that is the law of nature. This rise of one gives in to the fall of another that is the norm of being.” (Kuruvilla Pandikuttu)


The very fact that we are born is we are bound to die. If life could continue to live on without death; life and the society or universe at large would be in utterly chaos. We will never comprehend death. It is a mystery lying before us.


Throughout the history in almost all the religions, gods and goddess have been held responsible for death. But we now know that we are made up of matter and we will return to that matter when all the cells of organism die. Death is a law of nature.  But if I am by chance going to face it tomorrow, I am forced to ask, what is death? My reaction would be very obvious crying to God with a deep anguish, why have you done this to me? But, the very fact that we are born is we are born to die, which gives life for others.


Death is a presencing and absencing phenomena, the co-existence of the opposite like, light and darkness and good and evil.   I can imagine that I no longer exist or am death, but with certainty I cannot imagine that I no longer am. “Death in no way can I apprehend it as a non-being of me,” says, Paul Ricour. This is me a mystery. As a mystery death opens us to ever more depths reality of life and of non-life.

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