Death

I’ve spent years grappling with the idea of death.

What exactly is death? What exactly is death? The mechanical shutdown of the body? Or is it the soul abandoning the mortal coil in search of gentler realms? When are you considered dead? Does it begin when your heart stills—or when those you love begin to forget the sound of your laugh? Is it when your memory finally slips from the minds of those you once held close?

Or perhaps death arrives not with silence, but with the loss of purpose.

This fixation has weighed on me for years. Having witnessed the death of a loved one firsthand, I can’t help but think of my own—and what, if anything, follows.

I once heard in a dayro— a Gujarati folk gathering where spiritual and cultural stories are told through music and spoken word— that it’s a blessing that humans can move on. When you die, your friends and acquaintances will miss you for a few months. They will cry maybe. Your inner circle may take years to find peace. They will think of you at every gathering, occasions and important moments of their life. Your immediate family - Mother, Wife, Children might take a lifetime to move on. But ultimately, they move on. Moving on is what enables life to go forward. Clinging to someone who’s no longer aware of your grief—that’s the real torment.

Many of my friends say I fear death too much. I wear a helmet when I ride my bike. I buckle up religiously behind the wheel. I don’t chase adrenaline. Like Bob Seger’s Beautiful Loser—always playing it safe, always watching from the sidelines.

What I have realised is this: I don’t fear death itself—I’ve made peace with its inevitability. What I fear are the consequences. I can’t help but think of what my children will do without me, how my wife would endure this cruel, cruel world and what would my mother do? Her husband already gone, and now her only son.

That’s what scares me. Not the end—but the ripple.

I know they will move on, eventually. But those years that they haven’t moved on, I don’t want them to go through that. That is why I play it safe.

For them.

I like to think that if humans had no worldly attachments, they would want to die that very instant. The final relief. The everlasting silence that asks for nothing.