My best friend growing up – I’m going to leave out the name, don’t want to get her involved in this – used to say death was black. Devoid of colour, of light, of thoughts.
Essentially, of everything.
“But you,” she used to say, “not for you. You will keep on thinking, that mind of yours will keep grinding away like it always does.”
Okay, I suppose this calls for some context. I think a lot. What you would call classic overthinkers. Someone would say something to me at a party, maybe a comment about what I was wearing, about the way I did my hair, about my job, about any of the million things people think they have the right to comment on. Some people call it socialising, some networking. And some would say that’s downright intrusion. But after such an incident, you would find me thinking into the late hours of the night about what they could have meant. I won’t bother to give you precise examples, because honestly that can take all day and some more.
Today, I’m remembering that friend because I find myself doing exactly what she was referring to in that statement of hers. My mind is grinding away. Thinking. Creating thoughts that, truth be told, have no business being in there. Thoughts that I know will surely send me spiralling down the rabbit hole overthinkers almost always find themselves in.
I want to say I’m not so different from other overthinkers, but in a way I am.
You’ll see how.
Anyway, so I was thinking about an uncle of mine. He is long deceased, and he lived what we call a full life. Lived till 95. Despite the complete whiteness in his hair and the sagging skin under his jaw, which came in after he had turned around 80 I think, he still never missed a birthday or wedding he was invited to, went on trips with his friends, took the train to the car parts factory he owned and ran all his life. And he never said no if someone asked for help.
So, yes, he had lived a full life. His family, even the extended relatives, loved him, his friends cherished him, his workers respected him. And this was his legacy. A man admired by everyone he had ever met in his life. So when he was bid ridden in the last five years of his life and he lost the very things that made him precious (his own physicality and his willingness to be involved), he realised the part of his legacy he had built was gradually crumbling. What he didn’t want was to see it completely erased by the time he breathed his last. And that desperation – bordering on despair – is what you heard in his voice in those last years he spent on his bed; the man that once prided himself over his self-reliance now reduced to just a lump of flesh and bones who had to be helped when he wanted to use the facilities.
His voice in those years had lost all authority. And, mind you, he was an authoritative man. Despite the admirability people had for him, I heard he ruled his family with an iron fist; an inflexibly orthodox fist. I heard form my mum and dad he did not let his son work anywhere except his family business, did not even let his son have a love marriage. His wife – my aunt – had suggested opening a clothing boutique when they had been newly married, and he had shunned the idea down. There was an abundance of help reserved for people outside his house, but within it rules were rigid and unbending.
It’s been five years since he passed away. In that last month, he had become incredibly feeble; in a way, I think he had finally accepted his deteriorating physicality (and the legacy he had built) and given up. Could not even walk to the bathroom hardly ten steps from his bed, would not eat, refused to receive phone calls (which he got quite a few in that month). I don’t what he felt – that is, if his mind even was in a state to allow him to recognise what was happening to him – in those last few days before the last breath escaped him.
But, more than that, I wonder if a part of him still remains… somewhere here. As a memory, yes of course it does. I’m sure people who he had helped out, people who relied on his wisdom to get through tough times and tougher situations, still remember him. His grandkids, who as I heard were never on the receiving end of his iron fist tyranny, would still reminisce the stories he told them, of the trips to the market to buy the kids ice cream when their mother won’t allow them. The way his voice never rose even when things got more than heated in conversations, his affection for people around him (even with the rules he had laid down, I have been told he was one who would die for his family) and the sheer life he possessed, all of it I’m sure lives on; though, in a few years’ time, who knows?
But, the question is, does he still linger? Not in body of course, and not through remembrances, but consciously? Is he also someone for who, like my best friend used to say, death is not black? That after he passed on, something of him – his mind, I guess, which refused to stop functioning – was still left behind?
It must, no? You don’t live such a hearty life for decades only to have it wiped away in one clean twist of fate?
Of course, I would know. It’s never been black for me. Two years it has been since that bloody bus hit me fatally, and my mind still keeps grinding away.
Shaurya Arya-Kanojia is the author of the novella, End of the Rope, and a novel scheduled for a release this year. He hosts an audio fiction podcast, called The Four Boys Club, on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and his short stories were nominated for The Best of the Net 2023 and the B’k Best Small Fictions 2021.
The Cabinet of Heed 