I am going to be heading out tomorrow afternoon to a friend’s memorial. Iris died of breast cancer. Iris loved my boys as if they were her own.
When my elder son Adi went on robotics tournaments, she was his second mom. She would text me pictures of score boards and Adi driving the robot. She was so proud of him. She cared for Ari in her after school center. She leaves behind her young boys, her loving husband and a whole bunch of people she cared genuinely for and who adore her.
As you can tell, death has wreaked havoc on my life (pun, intended) in the last few months.
To make sense of it all and share my thoughts and pain, I am going to be writing a rather morose series of posts on Life & Death. I’ll understand if you are unable to handle it and don’t want to read on.
If you can handle it, read on….
Ready for it? Ok.
Let us assume you and I found out you one of our loved ones is going to die 24 hours from now, what would we do?
We would drop everything.
Right?
We would rush to them.
We would hold their hand.
We wouldn’t even blink our eye.
We would tell them how much we love them.
We would move heaven and earth to stop, evade or slow the impending 24 hours deadline.
Now, think about it.
I gave a “fake” 24 hour deadline.
But, the truth of the matter is we don’t even know when the deadline is.
But, it is approaching us.
We all believe, falsely, that time is infinite.
How tragically beautiful that belief is?
Time isn’t infinite.
Time is ticking.
For you.
For me.
For our loved ones.
For all of us.
Hear that.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
We all know this.
Yet, we make plans.
We make dinner plans.
We make plans for tomorrow.
For next week.
For next month.
For next year.
It sounds ridiculous, does it not?
Well, it is called hope.
Humanity has thrived on hope.
I am not going to end this post, as I typically do, on a positive note.
I am not going to say – Make it all count.
Also published on Medium.
Originally published at ambalbalakrishnan.com