When an elder dies

Over the last couple of years, we've lost several elders in the family. Not to the pandemic but to old age. These siblings and cousins were in the same age bracket and after full lives they passed on. In many cases, the passing ended the suffering caused by age related or other illness.

How does one react to the loss? When a 80+ or 90+ old dies, the usual homilies of "God give strength to the family" to "Rest in peace" to the relatively new "Om shanti", seem trite. After a full life, the passing itself is hardly a surprise and we accept it as natural.

And yet, there is often a sense of unfinished tasks. There are conversations that we should have had, visits that should have been more frequent, gestures that will forever remain unmade.

An old African proverb captures this feeling well: "When an elder dies, a library burns to the ground."

How true. An elder has seen so much of life just by being there. In today's India that means a life that started under colonial rule and journeyed through seven eventful decades of change. The true loss is when those experiences and memories have not been shared and passed on.

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