THE BEAUTY OF DEATH

I was crying. Tears rushed out as though they had been blocked by a big rock, even I couldn’t control myself. The same people that made me cry were begging me to stop crying, but I could not. Everyone around me was crying, the atmosphere was perfect for such.

Sad faces, sorrowful words and pain filled the air. My Uncle, Mr. Mathew Barde was the one that brought me from school. From school, which was a boarding, he simply told me I was needed at home. My mind began to rush fast. I thought about every worse thing that a 13-year-old could think about. He was a very smart man he didn’t say anything throughout our journey. On reaching home, I was faced with the saddest news that a 13-year-old boy could face my mother’s death. Mother had died while giving birth.

How could she die? Why should she die? Why now? The best way to express my bitterness was with tears. No one could understand the questions I had, not even those who seemed to be providing the answers.

June 10, 2011, was the date she died, for me that was my birthday. A wise man once said that there are two important days in a man’s life, the day he was born and the day he finds out why. Until then, I had not figure out why I was born. In fact, I had never thought there was meaning to life. I was just simply living, filling up space and living because it is illegal to be killed.

After her death, my whole world of safety came crumbling. I had to find a way out. My mother had been a rock for me, a hiding place, my comfort, and my everything. She provided everything I needed, she loved me without restraint and disciplined me with every effort. Now, I had to live without all of these. I thought about two choices as at then, either I followed her by committing suicide or to live without her and make her proud, by applying all that I had learned from her, all the lessons she taught me.

I chose the latter. With the love of my father, the support of Mr. Mathew Barde and the love from so many other people, I built a life from the death of my mother. Her death became my inspiration. I was inspired to do everything that she wanted me to do. I realized that the best way to overcome death was to convert the bitterness into an inspiration. She became my inspiration for good, she became my inspiration for excellence and she became my inspiration for success.

Also, I accepted that death is the best invention of life. What if people don’t die? Then we probably wouldn’t be here. If people don’t die, then birth wouldn’t make sense. Death is life’s way of removing what is good to give us what is best; a way of removing comfort to give us struggle and success; a way of forcing us to find our way through life. Without death, many of us would not leave this stage called life. Each of us has a script, we need to exit when our script is over.

If there is a purpose in birth, then there is a purpose in death. I searched for the purpose of my mum’s death, I asked questions. I asked books, I asked people, I asked the Bible and I asked God. The answer didn’t come as an epiphany, it was an answer that came in a most normal form. It was that we can create the kind of life we want, life will never play according to our rules. Everyone has to make his own kind of paradise.

And to make your own paradise, you must have the courage to leave others paradise. I lacked that courage, I had to discover it.

Life’s difficulties are meant to bend us not break us. And we can always make manure out of every shit. The problem is many of us stand too long watching what has been lost, that we do not consider what is still left and what can be achieved. The death of a loved one is not the end of life, it is a chance for us to experience the problem of pain and a chance to choose growth. Death pushes us to ask the hardest questions of life, it makes go back to the bakery of life. Except we pass through the bakery, we may never become the “sweet bread” that we are meant to become, too bad that many of us do not leave the bakery soon enough, we stay too long and become “burnt bitter bread”. With these pains and hurt, we continue to serve others around us with the bitter taste that flows from our “bread”.

In each of us is the potential to be a sweet bread, however, we must pass through the bakery, and never stay too long.