On musings

This article is the first part of the series. 

The sun seems offensively bright and cheerful on a day such as this. The intense blue of the sky hurts my eyes as they lower the casket. People said it was a beautiful service. I suppose it was. I don’t have any recollection of it, as I was too busy trying to not stare at the body. You know how when you go out on a drive and spot a roadkill? It’s gory and disgusting, but you can’t get yourself to avert your eyes – Can’t look, but can’t look away. That’s what Alex’s open casket was to me. It’s funny that the deepest memory I will now have of her is not one of sharing a womb with her or of growing up with her, but one of death.

As it ends, people convey their condolences and start leaving. Everything is indistinct and hazy, going past me without really registering. I stand there wondering, did they really know who she was? Now when they think of her, are they going to remember the cheerful person she was or the pale corpse in the coffin? I for one, can’t stop thinking about how she’ll be decomposing. How in a while she’ll be nothing more than a few bones with worms and maggots. Is there any escape from the mind? I’d be much happier, if I could only just stop thinking. But then again, it’s not much of a setting to be happy.

Nothing could have prepared me for how I am feeling right now. It isn’t a feeling born out of denial, anger or even grief. It’s one of complacence, draining out any existing signs of fatal contemplation. This, after I had convinced myself that ending my own life wouldn’t have been the best option. After all, what’s the surety that death would be any better than my present life? I used to contemplate about it a lot. Sprawling out plans to end my life inside the vast landscape of my mind.  The monologues were odious, yet there was a certain beauty to them: “So, what do we have here? Hang myself or slit my wrists? Uh, no!This is not a run-of-the-mill Hollywood suicide story. So, what else? Let’s pop some extra dose of Valium and go skiing  maybe? I suppose that’ll make for good headlines.”

While control over my death fascinated me, what intrigued me further was murder.  Not that I’d ever commit it, but you know how when you’re angry with someone and it’s satisfying to imagine their death? I guess thoughts do carry some power. For, how else can you explain everything’s that’s happened. After our disagreement yesterday, I sincerely wished she drowned. Now, was it God listening to me? Or did the Valium I slipped her before going on a swim have something to do with it? Could be, could be not.

– By Trisha Reddy and Yuvan Subramani