|
ICANEWS
Marzo 2004, Año 1 # 2 |
| Life and Death |
| By
Marina López Casoli
Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Mar del Plata Community
College |
 nce
on a winter afternoon, I received the news that Mr. Smithson
had died. I was reluctant to go to the old man's funeral but
my conscience summoned me to attend. Our
relationship had started only two years before, very little
time to talk about friendship, not even the beginning of one,
at least not as far as I was concerned. But I knew I had to
go, although I resented the idea of going to a funeral. Why
should I contaminate my mind with ideas of death and anguish?
Was it fair? I would also die some day, so why should I go?
... GUILT. That was it. Guilt which was rooted
in the cruelty of youth.
I was twenty when I met him, "in the spring of life"
as the saying goes, and he was already eighty-five. I can
still recall the disgust that grew inside me whenever his
withered body was close to mine: his shabbiness,
greasy white hair, yellow-stained teeth, unshaved face, and
that unpleasant moist, rotten stench so characteristic
of the elderly when they have given up the hope to live. I
hated myself for having these mean thoughts,
for judging individuals for their appearance, for underestimating
the wisdom of age, but deep inside I was glad to know that
I had all the strength and freshness of a twenty-year-old
man that there was a whole life ahead of me waiting to be
breathed in. However, the very few times we met, he would
speak so tenderly that I felt guilty for being young, guilty
for my evil thoughts, and sorry for seeing how little by little
life seemed to abandon him. Still, I couldn't fight back against
my mean and narcisist ego.
The funeral parlor was dark, as they usually are. The curtains
drawn, the candles lit, the cheap-wooden coffin
standing still in the middle of the room. No flowers for the
deceased, no family, no friends, just me. I approached the
dead body. He had been dressed for the occasion with white
leather shoes, a dirty white suitapparently used on some other
opportunitybut no one took care of making up his already bluish
complexion. I stared at him with a battle
of feelings in my head: the curiosity of having a look at
a dead body against the abhorrence of my morbidness,
a sense of duty to say the last good-bye against my will to
leave that room immediately.
For a moment I thought I had seen the body move and then I
even saw him open his eyes. He grasped my sleeve and fixed
his watery eyes on mine: "Why do we die? Can you answer
me that?" he exhaled.
I'm not sure." I answered. "I think nature or God
or whatever it is wants us to be that way. Everything starts
and ends, nothing is forever. We know we'll die and so we
try to make the most of life. If we were immortal, life just
wouldn't be challenging. It would be dull and boring to know
that we have all the time in the world to do whatever we want
to do."
But we die like this, suffering and reaching such a degrading
state that we hate to see our image in the mirror? Couldn't
we be born with some sort of deadline to avoid seeing ourselves
become useless and deformed, like a definite date of expiration?"
he insisted.
"If we were beautiful and healthy
all our lifetime, who would want to leave this world? I wouldn't.
Perhaps it's all planned. Our own degradation makes us desire
death, it makes us wish to stop coping with the burden
of our misery. It's nobody's decision to die except ours.
If we were fine and happy and healthy but knew that on October
1st, 1999, we are going to die, we would go crazy; we wouldn't
be able to stand the idea of leaving such a wonderful life
here on Earth. If we suffer, we want to die and that desire
makes the idea of death less painful. Don't you think?"
I don't know why I spoke so calmly. It was quite an uncommon
situation to be talking to a dead man, but the whole thing
didn't affect me much. Besides, I couldn't believe it was
me who loved life more than anything else. The old man continued
in an even weaker tone:
"You know
what I think? I think you who are alive understand death better
than I do. I think dying isn't for me. I'm not made for this."
"No one is made for death," I replied, "but
we all die some day or another..."
My voice seemed to faint, and I started having
a different perspective of the room. I was all of a sudden
lying face up staring at a young man whose
sleeve I was grasping...I heard the young man say to me:
"I told you death wasn't for me. I'm not made for it
and you seem to understand it much better."
I saw him smile and leave and my eyes were suddenly shut,
never to open again.
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| Glossary |
Summoned:
convocaba
Guilt: culpa
Rooted in: enraizado
Withered: marchito
Shabbiness: aspecto desarrapado
Stench: hedor
Mean: mezquino
Coffin: ataúd
Bluish: azulada
Complexion: tez, cutis
Morbidness: morbosidad
Burden: carga
Weaker: más débil
Lying: recostado
Faint: debilitarse
Shut: cerrados
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