Death never makes sense.
Though all of us are inexorably headed toward it, and though we know it is happening all around us, it doesn't make sense.
Though we reassure ourselves with religion, science - beliefs in reincarnation and the afterlife - still, when death appears it never makes sense.
Someone close to me died the other night. We watched him, in the hospital, breathing with the help of a machine, comatose, his brain flooded with blood.
For eight hours we waited and watched, sometimes holding his hand, sometimes whispering in his ear, telling him we loved him, telling him he could let go now, that it was alright.
And all the time, though I knew his brain had effectively died five hours ago, and I knew his body was going to die very soon, still my mind couldn't accept it.
I couldn't accept it because his body still breathed, the chest rising and falling - the pulse in the hand I held was still strong, and his body was still warm. He was alive. That face I had spoken too, and shared thoughts with, that body I had hugged hello and goodbye. He was alive.
Then the doctor came and after making sure he had permission, he ushered us out while he and the nurses disconnected the breathing apparatus. We waited down the hall until they called us up, and as I walked back up I saw his body struggling on the bed as it clung to each breath.
His eyes were half open and in the dim room, they seemed to be looking into mine though I knew they saw nothing. And again we waited, holding his hands, his feet, hugging his struggling body as each quivering breath came, then went ... came then went ... until the body couldn't do it anymore. One spasm, then another ... then one more.
Only then, in the incredible stillness of death, did I finally realize that this body before me was no longer him. It was already an empty thing.
He was dead, and it still didn't make sense. For all the incredible insights I've had in my life, the thinking I've done, the intelligence I've built and fed with information - this death still doesn't make sense.
Goodbye Rafik. You'll always be missed.
