In memoriam

 ** Trigger Warning: Death, Loss of a loved one, Suicide**

Image Source: Free Plant Image on Unsplash

Dakko is no more. 

Even as I type this sentence there is a sense of overwhelming disbelief within me. A strange numbness takes over my senses as my heart refuses to believe this ultimate truth staring at my face right now. 

For me, she was love. Since the time I was an infant, I had known her as love. She was there when I needed her, pampering me, loving me, mollycoddling me, and bearing with all my tantrums throughout my life. I cannot imagine my three and a half decades of existence without her being there during some of my toughest times. 

When I look back and think of the darkest phases of my life, I can only see her standing by my side. Solid like a rock, refusing to let me give up. She has brought me back from the clutches of death more than once. And for that, I will forever be indebted to her. I wish I had learned the ability to bring back people from the dead from her. 

But for all the love she shared, unfortunately, she always remained devoid of it. I wouldn’t say I never loved her. I did, with all my heart. And she knew that. Perhaps the difference was in the love I gave her and the love, she sought in life. These two things could never align. I remember how she struggled to find love and joy in life. I also have witnessed the moments when she tried, sometimes too hard, to grab whatever love and joy she could manage to hold onto and survive. 

Survive she did, but then for how long can one live without love and hope. Without dreams and desires. The soul is long dead, it is only the weight of the body which we are plying around on this earth waiting for that day when this ordeal will end and you will be finally free. Finally, after four decades of such a soulless existence, her ordeal ended. 

She was free.

Or should I say, she decided to end it and free herself? I don’t blame her for doing so. I perhaps cannot even imagine the pain of living a life without a soul. The sheer weight of a dead body can be too heavy to carry around and to add to it, the pressure of pretending to be happy and alive. The struggle is real. 

Whenever someone dies, we say Rest in peace. What we seem to forget is, that we humans have the magical ability to make peace with whatever life gives us. Be it pain, be it hurt, or be in tears. Just like Dakko! She had made peace with everything that life sent her way. She smiled through her problems and never let anyone know what she was going through. And that is the reason I knew she was at peace in life. But in death, I want her to rest in love. 

I want her to be surrounded by endless love and joy. I want her to bask in the magic of love. Not any other type of love but the form of love she always craved for and desired when she was alive. For that is when I know, she will be the happiest.

Rest in Love, Dakko