Louise Grech writes:

There is no age for death. Death knows no boundaries of love or money. Death pities no one. Death is an inevitably natural reality through which every living earthly and astronomical organism, whatever the hierarchy, humans, animals, plants must go through alike. Death is black, but is black beautiful? Is the darkness and void of death the door to another level of existence? And what if death is truly the beginning of the endless reality?

All religions state that there is life after death. But it is not just because religions instil it in our brains; For how can it be that we feel the presence, sometimes too strongly, of our loved ones were it not that there is life after death? Plants die and are recycled in the circle of life. We shed this image of our earthly body and take on a different image to continue the cycle of existence.

In death there is life for the dead, because once we die we are reborn in an existence where there is no physical or emotional suffering. In death there is life for those left behind – after grieving we find inner peace of having given our friendship and love to the person now ‘dead’. We realise that our tears are tears of selfishness, tears stemming from separation of our loved ones through this journey of existence.

In death there is life as we realise that we ought to live this level of existence to the maximum of our abilities, that we are bound to enjoy each other’s company and that nothing matters most than our loved ones and our dreams. In death there is life as we learn that it does not matter which religion we follow, which God or Allah or Buddha we pray to as long as we gather the strength to face reality and realise that death is life.

Only then are we ready to embrace our own death, a door which allows us the eternal company of our loved ones so long departed which we daily miss and cry over.

“Who knows but life be that which men call death, and death what men call life.” (Euripides c484-406 BC )