The Dead & Color White:
My first experience with Death was when my youngest sister
passed away. She was just over a month old.
My mother named her Gayatri. I was 7 years old then. She died
mysteriously while she was asleep. My mom realized Gayatri was not breathing
and Gayatri’s body was cold and stiff and blue when she picked her for
feeding. I don’t remember much of the
incident. But I vaguely remember the commotion, the cry, the people, the
mornings, the flowers.
I guess the realization dawned on me when I saw she was
wrapped in white and taken away. She looked like a small doll being wrapped and
veiled
My father passed away in 2008; August 31st 2008
to be precise. He left while he was being operated. The last I saw him was at
the mortuary. Again wrapped in white, cold and stiff and a distinct smell. It
felt like Death has its own odor. I collected my Fathers remains from the
hospital and drove with him along with my mother in the ambulance to the
cremation ground.
Hemavati a.k.a. Hema, left us on 3rd of June’16.
She was diagnosed with Cancer in 2005 and then Short Bowel Syndrome since
2014. We called her “Akka”.I have been
with her very close since the last couple of year; especially during her Short
Bowel condition. I shared a strange connection with her. She was never a very expressive one, but yet
I could sense and understand what she was going through and what she needed and
meant at most times.
I was constantly by her side for the last 3 days of her
hospitalization. The last thing she spoke was, “just be with me.” A strange
feeling of emptiness and sudden lose arose in me just few minutes ago she left;
I was waiting outside he ICCU and insisted the security staff to allow me to
see. He very understandingly allowed me to go in. I watched my sister and saw
the heart rate monitor slowed down in front of my eyes; and then the flock of
doctors engaging in CPR, but all in vain. And that was it.
Again the WHITE….plain, blank, spotless White, wrapped
around.
Death has its own distinct face…its own color of despair….
its own odor of lose, own feeling of emptiness.
White for me has now become synonymous to Death. People generally are
vary of the color black; due to its synonymy and association with Darkness, but
White is gloomy, spotless and so it reveals all the darkness, all things
negative, all that is not acceptable.
