Death as the gateway to life

We are on the banks of the sacred river Ganges; in Varanasi to be exact where millions of Hindus congregate all the year round to bathe in the murky water and cremate their loved ones. While the ghats burn incessantly and charred and blackened limbs that were once full of life cave into the fierce flames, the young and old disrobe and immerse themselves in a torrent of mud and human remains. The merging of the worlds of the living and that of the dead is never anywhere as close as in this extraordinary place.

In the west, once the body has ceased to breathe and corruption sets in, we seal it into a coffin and bury it in cemeteries which are like small towns for the those who may or may not live in shadows and who await the ultimate reawakening at the end of time.

November is a sad month and always has been. It is the month that despite global warming still marks the transition from bright summer to bleak winter. It is therefore not surprising at all that the Church has indicated the second day of November as All Souls' Day. I clearly remember it as a day wherein one had to hear three Masses. The vestments were black and one followed it up with a visit to the cemetery to remember the dearly departed and lay flowers on their newly cleaned graves.

Remembering our own mortality is a very uncomfortable feeling but one that is necessary as we must live with the fact that one day we too will join the millions upon millions who have gone before us to the great unknown. To quote Woody Allen: "It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens".

Throughout our lives we feed and clothe our bodies. We follow special diets and exercise regularly to live just that little bit longer. We wear warm clothes in winter and cool ones in summer; our entire existence is centred on providing for our own bodily comforts and that of our loved ones; and yet, despite it all, when the day comes it is unavoidable. The Grim Reaper cares not about whether one is rich or poor, fat or thin, old or young, healthy or sickly; he strikes down as Fate dictates.

Loved ones are enshrined in our hearts and memories but even they fade as Life goes on and, after a couple of years, one actually has to look at a photograph of them to remember their features and catch an echo of their voice.

I am reading Tolkien's Silmarillion for the umpteenth time; a problematical book if there ever was one. It recounts the entire fictional history of Middle Earth from its creation by the Ainu to the very eve of the Great War of the Ring. Man was Iluvatar's third creation and Death was considered to be the gift of Iluvatar! We are all unconsciously obsessed by Death and the Thereafter. All our works of art and literature; works that endure, are yearnings for elusive immortality. Notwithstanding this all of us are reduced to names in history books if we deserve it or nameless portraits in collections were we lucky enough to be portrayed by an artist of note.

I was leafing through one of my art books; 100 Famous Portraits, most of which are labelled Portrait Of A Young Man With Gloves or The Lady With The Ferret. Relatively few of them actually have names. These nameless portraits were once real people with stories to them, who lived and breathed, loved and were loved and whose names, through some careless accident, were lost forever.

Leafing through Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti's latest publication about Antoine Favray, there were a good number of Portraits Of A Maltese Lady or Portraits Of A Knight. They were real people too. Yet they have been forgotten. While their frozen image still gazes enigmatically out of the canvas, bedecked in ancestral jewellery and encased in silk, velvet, lace and fur, their names are lost to us. Even were the names not lost, their personality has long crumbled into the dust particles that fill the air we breathe.

Ancestor or not, the relationship with anyone or anything alive has disintegrated into nothingness and the portrait itself is transformed into a mere social comment about its present owner! If the artist was competent, one may actually catch a glimpse of the real person in the portrait but that is very rare. Symbolism in the painting, like a flower, orders and decorations or a money bag may indicate social status and family standing but very little more about the real person. For, after all, "the bodies of those that made such a noise and tumult when alive, when dead, lie as quietly among the graves of their neighbours as any others".

Yasser Arafat is no more. His distinctive but uncomely features crowned with the Palestinian veil will live long in our memories as this controversial man who, while being labelled as a terrorist, was also awarded the Noble Prize For Peace, is laid to rest. So many have died for the cause he advocated and will go on dying. The world is divided into those who called him a criminal and those who believe that he is a saint. Yet in a couple of years he will be consigned, like we all are, to the dustbins of history, while others take his place.

History is a strange judge. Rostand said: "Kill a man and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone and you are a god". This just goes to show what irrational and strange creatures we humans are.

Above all, mors janua vitae, death is the gateway to life, and it is simply this universal belief, irrespective of whether we are Christian or Muslim, Jewish or Hindu, Orthodox or Buddhist, that somehow, somewhere, we will live on, that keeps us going.

kzt@onvol.net