"I want somebody who can do the job gently, somebody who can break the news without breaking hearts." Victor Linus' character is looking for someone to go to inform the mother of her daughter's death. The lot fell on such people who were entrusted with breaking such news.
It seems that the first memory related to death is the story told by a relative who came home very early and took my father a stone throw away and spoke in a grave manner. Aunt's elder son had drowned in a river. Everyone had the common sense to understand that something was at stake. Grandfather screamed and passed out before the relative stepped out of the compound. It was a bad moment.
At some point, we are bound to witness the demise of our loved ones. Everyone prays for the long life of their loved ones. Yet death surrounds us in many ways. David prays for his sick child. For seven days he fasted and prayed, not even rising from the ground. The baby died all the same. The servants were afraid to tell David. They said to each other: "How shall we tell him? He may kill himself. “When he saw what the servants were saying, he realized that the child had died.” Is the child dead?" They said yes. Then David got up from the floor, bathed, changed his clothes, went to the temple and prayed. He returned to the palace and asked for food and he ate. The servants asked, "What have you done? When the child was alive, you fasted and wept; but when it died, you got up and ate." David answered: "Why do I fast now? He will not come to me unless I go to him. "Consciousness of one's own mortality is the driving factor in logically coping with the death of loved ones. It can also be read that he went to the temple. The Hebrew word for 'worship' also has the connotation of 'prostration'. 'You keep the account of life; do as you will.' And life goes on. Accept obituaries nobly—that's what David did. The practice of the East was to fast and mourn for at least four days. After that, relatives and friends forced them to take a bath, put on new clothes, forced them to eat, and brought them back to normal life. Here, all that David did in an instant was exactly what was in practice.
One would not think that he did so because he was not sad and did not mourn the emptiness that the absence of loved ones can create. There is a 'yes factor' in life. The key to that ‘yes’ is not so easy to come by. One can reach it from deep faith. After that life resumes its old rhythm. "Thinking that the mist is mine, the weight on the hat is lightened", says, Nishiyama soil.
∎
