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 31^st 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 3^rd 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.