The death of a muse

Here, at the hospital, a death goes unnoticed. A death I was witness to, and to be frank, the cause of. An insignificant end to a trivial manifestation of the essential soul. Rather, one of the deaths of a single soul. And here’s how.

As I sit blankly staring into nothingness in the wee hours while Amma sleeps peacefully, there's a slight disturbance under her bed. I wake up from my reverie as a cockroach appears suddenly out of nowhere and runs all over the place. I try to kill it with Amma’s slipper. As I can’t bring myself to hit really hard, it doesn’t quite die and starts wobbling around after a while. I ‘kill’ it again and it’s now lying with its feelers moving. I am hoping the cleaning ladies will come soon or I will have to ‘kill’ it all over again. I now realise, in my reluctance to kill, I am causing it to die several times. Perhaps that’s the case of many a person lying in the hospital. They are dying multiple deaths. But just how many deaths can one die?

How many deaths?

How many deaths will you die? Several and many more. When you know it’s just a matter of time before you will be gone. With every losing battle with death before the final war. With every ragged breath and every delayed heartbeat. When you accept destiny and when you alas succumb. Heart grinding to a halt. Breath dragging to a stop. Every cell giving in. One by one. Beat by beat. Breath by breath. Inch by inch. You die till what’s left is buried, burnt. Then dying over and over in every living mind, you die a million times.

It’s just that some deaths leave you still alive.