The effect of death on the living

The sudden death of Mrs Susan Nyaradzo Tsvangirai, the wife of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai of Zimbabwe had me pondering about death and dying and its painful effects on the living. One minute she was alive in the car talking to her husband and the next she was dead, in the blink of an eye an accident had occurred and took her life. My sincere condolences to the Tsvangirai family. What makes death so painful to the living is how it visits stealthily without prior warning, without giving us a chance to ceremoniously say goodbye to all our loved ones, without giving us a chance to finish off that unfinished business and without giving us a chance to for the last time declare our until death do us part love to the one we love and tell him/her for the last time how we appreciate the joy and peace he/she brought into our lives. No matter how many times we experience the death of our loved ones we never get used to death and dying, we never become immune to the pain it causes, it never ceases to hurt us everytime someone dies and the idea of dying never ceases to frighten us. Thoughts of death makes us wonder about heaven, the
after life, reincarnation, hell, ghosts and ancestral spirits which are all topics that have no proof and so are veiled in uncertainity and so depend on our faith or beliefs. It is this uncertainty about what is beyond death that makes death such an enigma, that makes us stigmatise death despite the fact that it has been with us since the beginning of life.

I am one person who has had an unfair share of death in my family, just when I would be almost healed from the last death another would happen and pierce the same wound in my heart that the previous death had caused and that happened eight times in a space of two decades. Grief became my middle name and had I let it mess with my mind by now I would have died from the stress and depression caused by the grief but I was determined to survive it all. One day I sat down and wondered what then is the meaning of life when at the end of it all you die and leave all you worked for throughout your life? I decided to find out what is essential in life and concentrate on that. I decided to concentrate on the here and now and not waste my time on the tommorrows because tommorrow might never come , tommorrow is too nebulous. I also decided not to waste my time on yesterdays because yesterday is already past and can not pass by again, there is nothing I can do about yesterday, it isn't real anymore. Death taught me to prioritise love, happiness and peace in my life above everything else, it taught me not to procrastinate showing love to all whom I love, it taught me not to procrastinate finishing off projects I start and it taught me to approach each day with the special man I love as a Valentine's day to shower him with love not only in words but also in deeds. These days people whose lives I touch get overwhelmed with the woman of substance I have turned out to be, there is some positive aura about me that they can't put their finger on. The humanity I exude is a result of how the deaths in my family over the years made me appreciate and celebrate myself and humanity each single day that I am alive.

Over the years I learnt that it is not my house, my car, my clothes, my education, my money, my face or my body that is essential about me. What is essential is the inner person I am and how I live and embrace my life right now, wherever I am. I grab my ife and humanity in my hands and hug it tightly but gently. I approach life with a paint brush and some erasable colours and paint my idea of paradise as I go through life and this paradise will not be for me alone, it will be for all humanity. I share my paradise with everyone who touches my life because I believe
that a paradise ceases to be a paradise if it is not shared. Where I see the mixture of colours not blending in perfectly in my paradise I erase them and paint a new one that portray the peace, love and happiness that paradise is known for. In my paradise I take my life in my hands and kiss it and then go on from there with a smile, an open objective mind without any prejudices and a very big loving heart. All this came about because I learnt to accept death. The only way you can appreciate life is if you accept death as something that limits our lives and which
happens to humanity whether we like it or not. The whole idea of life is to live it meaningfully and to the full before death decides to make you return to dust. Most people don't know how to handle death and carry that albatross around their necks for the rest of their lives, always on the verge of tears. Such people need to accept that death is just another aspect of life and then liberate themselves so that they enjoy life inspite of it. I believe that liberty is not a battle that requires the conversion of others in order to win. Liberty is won when you accept the idea that you are the sole master of your life, when your life is subordinate to none, and no other life is subordinate to yours. No one owes you a living so none but yourself is responsible for your living years and its up to you how you
live those living years.