Elsewhere
When the funeral director and his staff wrapped up the
somber process of washing and shrouding my father’s lifeless body, they said “Now,
the deceased is ending all his ties with this world.” It was the saddest and
unbelievably coldest bunch of words that I had ever heard in my life. Even
though what I saw right in front of me was my dad without soul anymore, I wasn’t
ready at all to accept the funeral director’s temerity to say those bitter, heartless words. Those words sounded
and felt so frustrating like nefarious
accumulations of beta-amyloid protein in my dad’s brain in his final days.
Some religion might argue that you would be completely
out of the memory of the deceased in “elsewhere”, the place one belongs to
after death. Either a believer of God or an atheist, most of us tend to believe
there is some higher ground we will leave for when life here in this world is
over. What makes us all keep the faith in living in some place of the unbeknown after we are done with this world? Is it
because we would feel sorry for our own self or the bereaved without such a
belief? Otherwise, have we all been dragged into a huge hole of lies that there
shall be a whole new “elsewhere” once our bodies have stopped living in this
world? Then, what is the picture of that place in your imagination like? Heavenly
or unimaginably pitch black?
I have a short voice recording of my final conversation with
my dad in the hospitable. Since he was becoming more and more delirious – especially
at night-, our conversation sounded weird and off the wall. With his eyes closed tight, and his cold hand in mine, Dad was repetitively trying to solve basic additions like “One plus
five…..two? Six? One plus six….” I was
like “One plus five is six!! Good job, Daddy!!!”….” Each time I play the
recording when I miss him so badly, I find myself wondering if Dad was really
with me when we had that conversation…or if he was already on his way to the “elsewhere”.
Also, I’d ask him in my mind this simple question over and over again. ‘Will
you ever recognize me when I get there to join you some time in the future?’
Expressions
1.
temerity:
(noun) excessive boldness or rashness; foolhardiness or recklessness
2.
nefarious:
(adjective) infamous by way of being extremely wicked
3.
beta-amyloid
protein: (proper noun) an amyloid that circulates in human blood
and in cerebrospinal fluid and is deposited into plaques found in the brains of
patients with Alzheimer's disease. Also called amyloid beta-protein.
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