Death At Funneral

I have never attended a funeral. I remember though, very vividly, when my neighbour died. Urban planning being what it is in 1990s Kenya, a great idea poorly fulfilled, I was afforded a rare glimpse into this private affair- as was half the estate. (We’re not a gated community)

I remember the emotion, the plaintive moans, the masked expression of the grieving widower, the sullen ones of the children. I remember all those things that are expected in the in the natural progression of as unnatural an event as death.

She was a Muslim. Had to be buried on that day. Of all these things, I remember nothing so much as the thought that struck me when I saw them carry away the corpse, draped in a dazzling white sheet. It was a purely selfish thought- but a completely human one.

I wondered whether the angel of death had hovered over our neighbor hood, over our house…over me before finally descending on her. And if so, what had made Him not choose me?

Death gives meaning to life. It scares us into living, if only for a little while. That’s why when it happens on a large scale- the Nakumatt fires, the Molo explosions and more recently the famine deaths, the Nyakach floods- we feel the need to huddle together. We hold memorials, we declare mourning periods, and we blame Satan…the government. We pray and cry. As if death were an unforeseen eventuality. As if it weren’t some immutable aspect of existence.

Death hovers over us everyday. Sometimes it treads silently, strikes unexpectedly. Sometimes it is in the obvious pain of disease. Sometimes it is the physician that ends that pain.

This knowledge resides at the deepest recesses of our minds. It is pushed there by fear. Fear of the unknown, of what cannot be controlled. But to claim this truth would bring certain pointlessness to living. We live…to die?

So we live our lives, pointless and purposeless at times but temporarily free of that fear of the end. We create routines and daily rituals, subtly scorning death. Some live it on the edge in flagrant defiance. We are shocked when those around us die. What a farce. We know death. It knows us…will one day call us by name.

But this insane farce is the only way to sanity. We need to pretend to live so that we can live, truly live. Until the next calamity pushes this inevitability back to the forefront of our minds.