Homage

The man who gave me my name, and told me three words which will guide me for the rest of my life.
The woman from whom I draw inspiration everyday for strength of character, hard work, eternal curiosity, and unconditional love.

2007 - the year I lost both of them to the circle of life, within a few months of each other.

I try to put down the million thoughts I had, and still have - about crematoriums, lighting funeral pyres, priests and rituals, grief and sorrow, family, parents and children, fathers and sons, legacies, the philosophy of life and death.

And I find myself standing once again in front of that simple cement plaque, I'm wet from head to toe from all the ceremonial baths, with sacred ash on my arms, chest and back. I'm breathing in that strange rhythm caused when the emotion has no more tears to push out, and has to find form and a way out through the lungs.

The plaque says, among other reliqious quotations, "The wise man laments neither for the living nor the dead - Bhagavad Gita". I try hard to understand this, and to convince myself. Maybe someday I will get it.

How does one suitably end a train of thought such as this? It doesn't matter.
I know what I have to do.

Live.


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