There are so many of us who know about life and can explain about its experience. Death, on the other hand, has no one alive to talk about it. So what is the way to know about death and its definition? One approach we can take is to define life first. Then we can start to take out what is not life. Thus, it is the process of emptying life. What is then left is, what we refer to as death. That also means we need not constrain the definition only to the physical domain. On an ontological level, the non-existence of one form of being is also death.
Now coming back to the story of mine and my fear about my father's death. So the 'living' or 'life' of my father for me was his existence in the things he was doing for me. The words he spoke, the things he brought and the thoughts he shared. It was the safety and protection which he gave me. The money he could spend on my demands or needs, for my education and entertainment. My whole lifestyle. And I wanted an assurance that this will continue forever. This father 'the way of his being' must not die. It died. A few years later, my father had a huge financial loss in his business. He couldn't afford that old way of being anymore. The loss was not just financial, it was also mental and emotional with a deeper impact not just on him but the entire family. For years I could not eat peacefully. The food in my mouth questioned me if I deserved it. I could see the journey of food from my mouth through the food-pipe. If this was happening to me, just imagine what my father went through. It was his death, the death of that being. His way of being which was in my teens and early childhood was now no more. There were several such deaths in his life. In my life too, and I am sure in everyone's life, we all encounter many such deaths.
So death too, has all of us on its side to talk about it, share its experience, the way we share about life.
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