THE SOUL OF DEATH

It was the day after the death of my soul. I wandered with my body around the house, knowing nothing, seeing just darkness even though it was a bright afternoon. I knew I had lost my soul but the fact still remained a mystery. It was not one of the fiction stories when one’s soul gets trapped with an old witch. Still I had taken a whole day to realize that I will feel or know no more. It was silence and yet loud painful screaming. Death of my soul created a vanity within me but its want screeched inside me and kept me awake the whole night.

Thankfully I had my brain with me, a functional heart and my pulse was on. The doctor said I am okay and there is nothing to worry with my physical health when I went to him for a checkup wondering depression post a death.  But then he quickly added I should see a psychiatrist. My friend John is one. I thought there is no better doctor for me than him. Then I realized that he might hurt me by revealing some disease. But I quickly remembered that I have lost my soul.
It must have been five in the evening when he finally arrived. He apologized for the delay and I smiled without really smiling. It was getting complicated. I think it must have been because the body is taking time to adjust without a soul. Are souls so necessary? Does everyone have them? Since I am alive even without it and anyone else can be…….

“Jessie, what do you think has happened to you?” he asked me while sitting down with a cup of coffee that my maid gladly made. Maria is a nice maid but I couldn’t feel the niceness anymore.

“Jessie, what do you think has happened to you?”  He asked again.

But this time I saw some impatience in him but again I couldn’t feel that emotion. Maria who was standing beside him stared at me. I knew there was something wrong but I couldn’t sense it?

“Jessie, stop thinking and answer my question. Tell me, what do you think has happened to you?” John said even more fiercely. I smiled to him, again experiencing neither of the emotions of being happy or his irritation.

“John, if I had known I would not have asked your help.” I said feeling nothing.

I saw john scratching his bald head. I think he must have thought that it is going to be tough. He asked his next expert question. “Jessie, what are the symptoms?”

“The symptoms. Well there isn’t many. I don’t feel anything. I don’t feel like sleeping, eating, walking, seeing, laughing, smiling, shouting. Nothing at all, John.” I said with a straight face. Just as he was going to ask something else I remembered the last symptom. “John, But I do feel one thing.”

I saw his eagerness and I said, “I feel emptiness and darkness all around me. I think death has taken away my soul and will soon take away the flesh.”

“Oookaay…”

“There is some problem, isn’t it John.” I said and I saw john stare at me.

“What is it John. Stop staring at me. You look like a frog.”

“Jessie tell me since when are you feeling this?”

“Since yesterday dawn.”

“Did you see or hear anything?”

“I dreamed.”

“What? What did you see in your dream?”

“Death. Pure and black. With no emotions or two faces. Simple and just. Difficult to convince and immortal. Inevitable and destined.”

“Jessie tells me the whole thing.”

I was lost in the dream I saw. Beautiful. I didn’t hear him at all. But the dream, I heard it. I didn’t understand John ever but I understood death. Known its feelings. I have or rather I had felt them. I don’t have a soul. I gave it to death. No, death took it away. Death took it away.

“Jessie?” shouted john and shook me up from my memories. He then continued, “Jessie, tell me, what did you dream? What is death like? Did it say anything to you? Did it ask anything from you? Tell me Jessie, speak up.”

“It is not like anything you would have seen. Nothing like you would have imagined. Nothing like you would have felt. Purely different John. There is no comparison. Death is better.”

“Better? Better than what?”

“Better than birth. Better than life.”

“What did death say?”

I closed my eyes and said, “death said many things even though it didn’t speak a word. Silence. Silence. Silence.”

“What did you understand?”

“I understood that he wanted to take my life. It said my time on earth is up. It said that I don’t have to stay any longer, said that I have to go back to god.”

“What happened thereafter?”

“I said I don’t feel like dying. Then it said…”

“What?”

“…that you will have to come. I know how to make you follow me. I am powerful. I will take away your feelings, emotions, soul.”

“Then?”

“I said I don’t want to die. But it said that it is stronger than life. I asked it how. It replied that it is the thing which takes away pain, thing which makes others cry and laugh. It is the only thing which is certain and inevitable.”

“Okay, what did you say?”

“I said I want to live one more day. Take my soul away but let me breathe one more day.”

“So is death going to come back tonight?”

“I wish it does.”

“Jessie, you are only 47. You will not die. There is no problem. Let me tell you how.

 

Often when thousands of times

Our heart tells us right

We ignore, we avoid, we fight

The god given love is birth

Life is a process

Of spreading it

Death is inevitable

Death is beautiful

But birth is love, love is never more”

All our lives

We spend thinking

We were not loved

The problem is that we never love too

Death is powerful, no doubt

But birth makes the powerful powerless  

Believe who you are

Move ahead of yourself, not love

Move with love to love more

People forget their purpose

Fall prey to death

Death is different but indifferent too

To people, emotions, love

Because for people who have nothing to lose

Have loved all their lives

Love teaches you to give more

Death takes things away, steals things

Birth teaches to give more and more and more

Jessie, there is one only solution to all your miseries. Just do what I say with full faith and love. I promise you, you will get your soul back.”

“What.”
**
It was a week later when I met John.  He was happy watching me smile and I was really smiling. He was watching me feel and really feeling my happiness. I was happy. I felt as if I found my soul. As if death gave it back to me.

“How do you feel now?”

“I feel beautiful! Thank you John.”

“Really, Jessie you scared me that day. But it’s okay because you have now many more things to do and say and definitely feel.”

“Yes. I have.” I said looking at the twenty children sitting in from of me in the orphanage I opened. I have realized that happiness come from sharing it. Satisfaction comes from seeing it go. There is nothing like death. Birth disguised in black is death. There is only birth. Only birth. And birth gives each one of us a chance. A chance to grow into a loving soul, respect earth, share love and see death. Death being a new chance of a new life. Of a new birth. Of a way of giving and sharing more love.

I waved at the children and called them towards me. I wiped off the tears that had clouded my eyes before I hugged all of them with love that I feel.
“Share and give whatever you can, whatever it is, to whoever you can, for giving is living. Living love.”
__END__