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Elsewhere


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.

     

4.   a thing/ a place of the unbeknown: a thing/a place without the knowledge of someone




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