In the funeral - A short story

In the funeral

There were six people in this ambulance. The ward boys had been in this business for the last 25 years but today they were part of a miracle. They were part of the process that transformed their way of thinking. This moment touched them like never before. The nurse was beyond words. She had seen this happen on daily basis and yet today when life smiled through its bitterness and impossibility she felt blessed to be here. Today she felt she knew the purpose of her life and job. Today she saw life in all its entirety.

In the morning it seemed just like any other day for all of them. They received a call for an ambulance and they had left the hospital as usual. Picking up the patient – who was a pregnant woman due for delivery, counselling her and the family members – well, everything was just about the same. En route to the hospital they were caught up in the funeral. This was no ordinary funeral. It was a sea of humans wailing and being hysterically distraught. A famous celebrity had died and her funeral procession brought the city to a standstill. People from all walks of life and all over the country seemed to have been there. People here represented the entire nation. Who had thought that she made and had such an impact? Certainly not

her family... They knew her to be a ‘superstar’. But seeing this reaction, support and anguish of her fans was something they couldn’t understand, process or were not prepared for. Maybe, even the celebrity didn’t know she touched the lives of so many people and she meant so much to all these people. And yet.....family was there standing dazed, aloof unable to fathom their feelings, emotions and loss in comparison to the pain that they witnessed. It was odd how death seemed to say more about a person than his life!

Did death make us more vulnerable and generous? Why did we regret not having said or done things whenever we heard the new of death? Did we presume it would never strike ‘a person’ known to us or close to us? Why did we wait till their death to talk about the good they had done to us? Why didn’t we tell a person how he was special when he was alive? Were we afraid or ashamed or such emotions? Death certainly did make all philosophical!

Contd....

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