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Letters to the Grave

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Rumination Station

Letters to the Grave

A Patchy Road to Acknowledging Grief and Death

Swarnali Mukherjee
Jun 26, 2022
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Letters to the Grave

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Portrait of Barbara of Portugal Jean Ranc, source: efflorescentdays.tumblr.com

In life, death speaks of the poignancy of one’s existence, and after life, it gives life completion. Or so do we hope. We tremble before it with our yearn for absolution. For it to render our story whole. But what if death is not linear in the way we perceive it. What if death is not the end of life but the absence of it. If you look at it in that manner, then death defies the logic of time. Death flows in both directions from the moment of its conception. It exists both before and after life. 

In all places where pain resides, death slides by slyly with its ebony cloak of deception. Death has a penchant for victory where human suffering reigns. Death threatens us with the possibility of our non-existence. But death is a friend to those who surmount their circumstances to survive. Death comes mercifully to those who death regards as worthy, and violently to those who death resents. Death is the master of its …

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