On the deaths we don’t mourn
People tend to think of death as a singular phenomenon and a unique culmination. In a way, it certainly is.
But death also contains multiplicities. Albeit unconsciously, we experience many deaths during our lifetime. We don’t always give it a proper funeral, nor do we keep solemn silences and give farewells afterwards. Most of the time, our deaths go unnoticed, unclaimed, and unvalued.
In fact, we experience death each year, whenever we grow older, wiser, or sicker. Each time we encounter change, as small as it may be, we are dramatically transformed and acquire new identities.
As we evolve, there are parts within us that disappear and perish. Sometimes, those parts are missed, and their loss is easily felt. When we fall sick, for example, we lose our healthy spirits and all the infinite possibilities that are entwined with them, as well as the joy of awakening and the fondness towards our physical bodies. Even after healing, we are never the same. Scarred by the shadows of pain, we become more cautious, more aware of our contingency and thus, either more excited or dreadful to live, hope and expect.
Nonetheless, that is not always the case. There are times when the extinction of our past selves is perceived as superfluous because we are too excited to embrace the new stage that change has brought, to even fathom the idea that something has been lost. Without acknowledging the storm, we quickly leap above flooding towns and bury what has been broken under new homes and beautiful buildings made of concrete of exhilaration and bricks of delight.
Such are the instances that can be glimpsed when children become young adults. When little girls become women, mothers, and superheroines; when little boys become men, fathers, and heroes. When pluralities of possibilities become singular definitions, and dreams become realities; when happiness comes too fast and we’re celebrating carpe diem, when do we give ourselves time to mourn what we could have become?
Whatever the satisfaction that derives from such process, there is always something that is killed and left behind, that fades away into nothingness or is reduced to a sigh under waves of regret, oblivion, and melancholic thoughts. These deaths, although overshadowed by the seemingly all-encompassing impatience, matter. They are, after all, the reason why we become what we are in the present. We had to leave parts of ourselves to die to become what we need to be in the future.
When we let these deaths go with no additional thought, we tend to forget what those precious parts of ours have done for us, and the lessons we have learned from them. For instance, when the child in us dies to welcome adulthood, we often forget how to stand after being wounded by falls, how to be proud of our scars, how to enjoy our loneliness and how to be fearless again.
Thus, we turn meaningful parts of ourselves into mere experiences, as if they could be replicated anytime we desire to and multiplied as many times as we want to. If we think about our lives carefully, there are many events that have killed us. But how many silences have we undertaken to reflect upon the aftermath?
Perhaps if we did, we would lose less, see more and live more wholesome days, without the burden of dislocation and void after changes and growth.
