My mother called at the last minute, she told was coming here because my uncle had died, everything happens fast when it comes to death doesn't it? One day the person walks down the street and greets, seems to be happy and smiles. In the other he is dead. So we went to the funeral, I've always been afraid of these rituals that persist over time, I've always avoided thinking about the death of my parents, but it didn't hurt so much, because I know it happens, and I know it's perhaps the only thing you don't have any control over, nor can you knowing what comes next, or changing fate. The interesting is, moments like this are warm, as sad as they are, at the entrance I met my aunt from a distant city, one of the aunts I like more. I found cousins, unknown people of family. Then came the harrowing part of having to look at the faces of family members, totally heartbroken and sad to have to stand there strong and with a clean face in such a brutal moment. I gave my condolences to the daughter, the wife (Poor Aunt Odete, after a marriage of 40 years or so, now finds herself without her partner for walks, food, conversation and company). I saw my godfather who seems to be so sick too, a godfather I love a lot, by the way. Ironically, my now-dead uncle had talked to my godfather the day before he died, they were talking about health, and then the one who seemed healthier left the next day.
So we enter the main room, where the ritual has the strangest and most surreal energy concentration, old ladies and gentlemen sitting on benches, paying this silent homage of permanence and respect to the deceased. It is noticed that young people are weaker, and do not like to spend too much time observing the body. Next to the coffin is my cousin, which incessantly touches the face of his deceased father, who is now nothing more than a machine without a worker. A garment without someone inside it, a tool that will never be used again. When I got close to the coffin I saw the scene as something that doesn't fit in common explanations, there was that body there, a face so familiar to me. A person who was present in my life almost for all of it, always present, never in particular, but there was the energy of family, felt the roots, life, the family tree made sense. Just like when we meet an always close cousin, that as much as we are not inseparable friends, we know who he is and how much he means to us. I didn't feel pain, I didn't feel pity, I didn't feel sad, I just watched and watched and watched. Your face, your hands... It doesn't fit the standard of “common thing” of our world the idea of a lifeless body. That's why death is like a taboo.
Because seeing that empty shell there, I felt parts of my brain that had never been used work to understand what was happening. You look and in the same hundredth of a second you know that there is no life in the body, it has a slightly grayish color, there is no expression, but it goes beyond that. There is simply no more light in the body, Please excuse me skeptics, but seeing a deceased, there is no greater proof that the soul is a fact, and in this case I could understand what it is like when the soul leaves the body, maybe it left before its time, it was forced to retreat, since the body didn't support as much as it should! Sitting now in one of the armchairs beside the coffin, I couldn't stop looking at my uncle's face, or rather, my ex-uncle's ex face. Now he is no longer my uncle and the body no longer belongs to him. And if we were to confabulate about where he is now, that text would become a thick book. The surrounding comments were interesting: -He didn't suffer, and enjoyed life; -We'll never know what the other side is like since no one can tell us; And so on. My cousin seems to feel much more, maybe it's something unique and sizeless, speechless to see your father, your creator lying in a coffin, already lifeless.
He certainly had no advance notice that his father would no longer be with them the next day when he learned he would be operated on. At that time I saw my uncle's face touching, whimpering low, evoking comforting words like someone wishing his father would come back just for a minute to explain how much he loved him and how sorry he was that he hadn't given everything he could to prove it to his old father. But now all that was left to do was caress her cold face. I felt for him, I understood him and I would like it not to be suffered even for one, nor for another. But these are things that happen in a way that we don't even have 1% control over. I philosophized with my mother sitting next to me, about life, death, existence, everything. She asked me if I had ever taken a dead man's hand, and of course she decided that I should. And yes, I was interested, I needed to touch a lifeless being. A being that, unlike my cats and dogs, was totally similar to me, in shape and reasoning. When I touched the frozen and immobile hand I felt strange, but not bad and I could actually see that it looked like simply a puppet, a very well made, cold wax figurine, there was no heat, no internal or external light in that being. There was only meat there.
At one point during the funeral, while my mother had gone there to talk, I watched many come and go, then I saw a more humble man, with simple clothes, flip-flops and a bag and a bag in his hand. He didn't seem to know the dead man, didn't seem to be related to anyone. Certainly he entered there out of curiosity or simply out of habit. Yes, I remembered that there are people addicted to funerals. He approached my uncle, watched him fixedly for a long time, I think with respect and tenderness, after about 10 minutes he touched his hands clasped around his body and quickly left. That sounded so interesting to me. I don't know how I should end this text, I just thought that this experience deserved to be recorded and I could learn a lot from the event, it makes me light and happy to know that my dear uncle's soul is now in some incredibly different place from here and that it has a long way to go yet. But it hurts me a little the fact that you will be sorely missed by your family. But it's comforting to know that everyone goes through this and it's the biggest proof that we don't have control over existence and the unknown, we can try to command but we're just employees wanting to be managers. And to finish it's worth remembering the scene of the day my uncle came to my house for a walk when I was still 15 or 16 years old and was learning to play the guitar, so I asked him to play something for me to see. He played with the delicacy of one of those songbooks that made serenades in the moonlight. Sounds from a time I haven't lived, but that made the head of a youth that has passed, that rocked the dreams of my mother and her sisters. The music was sweet and soft like a summer night. The classic strumming was even funny, so unusual for someone used to listening to Nirvana.
