RIP

The mother of someone close to me and my family passed away last Friday at the village. The old lady finally succumbed to cancer of the liver. I saw her several times in the past 5 months and the last being two weeks ago. She was weak, jaundiced and her abdomen literally ballooned symptomatic of liver schirosis. When I saw her then, there was anxiety all about her. When I asked her if she was in pain, she said it was something she had learned to get use to. She said she wasn't eating well. She spoke of not having much time left and said she felt it.

Last Friday afternoon, she died. I visited on Saturday evening only to find that the family had already buried her that morning. All her children were there. It was raining heavily when I arrived at the family's house and I was soaking wet. The atmosphere was still sombre and people spoke in hushed tones. An old lady from the adjacent bilek sang something akin to a eulogy while I sat at the bamboo veranda talking to the son's. I was told relations from four villages nearby congregated there the night before and most have left leaving now just the immediate family.

"They will be back later tonight and it won't be this quiet", the eldest son said.

Looking beyond the silences
The figures dance around me,
As the rain drummed on the zinc roof and dripped on the bamboo floor.

With their slow,
evading footsteps
I hear the falling rains
Of yesteryear's mourning song...going arid on my dry brows.

There...she is judged
And there she lies
In the land of dead rivers...
Dead suns...
Deadened darkness over her rooftop,
Over her barren head...
Over her land
Where she crawls to walk
And there she will be at peace
The peace of the dead...